Official documents show that civil servants feared they had been "outfoxed" by the medical and dental professions in talks over the introduction of a ministerial order which would have made GPs and dentists display lists of their prices.
The order, which had been sought by the Director of Consumer Affairs and was backed by the former minister for enterprise, trade and employment, Ms Harney, was abandoned by her successor, Mr Martin, before Christmas. The Attorney General had advised that the order could not be enforced.
The official file on the proposed order, which has been seen by The Irish Times, shows that the Department feared the lengthy list of services set out in the draft document - prices for 12 dental treatments and more than 75 medical procedures - could have resulted in higher bills for patients.
A senior official wrote in a memo to an assistant secretary in the Department last October: "I was seriously concerned that we had been outfoxed by the professions. The long list of services they were insisting on meant that we were running, in my view, a very real risk of increasing charges to the consumer."
The official also maintained that, in talks with the Department, dentists refused to allow a fee for a filling to be included in the proposed order. "Yet the vast bulk of consultations in a dentist's surgery are for a filling. By leaving it off the list, we are rendering the exercise pointless."
The Department files indicate that neither the Irish Medical Organisation nor the Irish Dental Association were opposed in principle to the price order. However, both were concerned that it should not conflict with their professional standards. They also argued that many services provided were not amenable "to a single price indicator".
