The Health Service Executive says it is reviewing and managing all potential risks to patient safety or health services linked to under-staffing and spending cuts.
The executive was responding to an Irish Times report which contained details of the HSE's confidential "corporate risk register".
This document provides an insight into the most urgent challenges facing the organisation.
Among the risks outlined in the register - which relate to 2012 - include:
* Harm to patients arising from inadequate delivery of health services;
* Risk of vaccine-preventable disease, such as measles, occurring due to failure to achieve targets for vaccine uptake
* Concern that designated cancer centres may fail to meet basic standards due to “fiscal challenges, the recruitment moratorium and other priorities”.
In a statement, the HSE said the risk register was a management tool designed to identify any potential risks facing the organisation.
“Management is required to proactively identify any risks that exist in their service areas so that these are actively managed, regularly reviewed, and actions taken to reduce the risk,” it said, in a statement.
It added that any cost containment or staff reductions are reflected on the risk register as part of the ongoing management of these challenges.
“Changes to how services are delivered, cost containment plans etc, are all subject to careful risk assessment prior to changes taking place,” it said.
Under pressure from the troika over health costs, the HSE budget has been cut by more than 20 per cent, or €3 billion, since the financial crisis began in 2008.
It has also lost more than 11,000 employees over the same period. This year the HSE faces another steep budget cut, although its service plan pledges to deliver the “maximum level of safe services possible”.
Other areas of risk identified in the unpublished register include:
* Funding running out for the nursing home support scheme, causing knock-on problems across the health services;
* Unsafe services for children due to a failure to comply with childcare regulations and standards;
Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher has described warnings of high risks to patients as a result of understaffing and spending cuts as "frightening but not surprising".
This will impact on every family in Ireland,” he said. “Minster Reilly needs to urgently change his priorities and focus on frontline services to patients, which he has failed abysmally to do.
