Ministers in a Fine Gael-Labour-led government would be given a yearly target list under a performance plan proposed by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte.
Asked if ministers would be fired, Mr Kenny said: "The taoiseach and tánaiste will assess ministerial performance against high-level targets. The answer to that is that if a situation arose like Micheál Martin or Martin Cullen in an FG-Labour government they would not survive, they would be fired."
The targets, Mr Kenny said, would be clearly outlined and subjected to subsequent inspection by the taoiseach and tánaiste.
A Kenny aide said last night: "Ministers will certainly know them [the targets]anyway. Those targets will be assessed for them by the cabinet, and by the taoiseach and tánaiste particularly. I don't see why the targets should not be published. They are, after all, providing a public service."
They would then be subject to "monitoring and measurement to see if the targets set are being met, and if they are not being met whether there are external factors that explain why they aren't being met, or whether they are not being met because a minister has been negligent. If the minister has been negligent then the minister will be sacked."
Mr Kenny said Mr Martin would face dismissal under the FG-Labour plan because he failed to read a legal brief from the South Eastern Health Board that warned that the State was breaking the law by charging people for nursing home care.
"It is a cardinal sin for any minister not to read a ministerial brief of which they have been made aware."
However, the performance plan is heavily qualified, as acknowledged by one of its key architects, Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton.
"If Ministers promise to the electorate to do certain things, or set certain objectives for themselves, then they will have to follow certain processes in terms of delivery and they will be held accountable at certain points.
"That doesn't mean that you can't disappoint, or that you can't meet certain obstacles but you have to have a framework in which you seek to deliver."
Mr Rabbitte said the political and economic environment would have to be taken into account before a final ruling on a minister's performance was made. "You could set the minister for enterprise certain targets but if there was an oil crisis it would be very foolish not to take that into account."
Mr Bruton said the new system would ensure that projects were better managed and that problems were faced up to much more quickly.
"When things go wrong, it is always easy to recoil from the appalling vista and say: 'I'll sit on my hands. My butt isn't on the line' if something happens. That is what we have seen repeatedly in PPARs. When things started to go wrong nobody cried halt."
