O'Malley set the tone for the week when he announced on Prime Time that child psychiatrists liked having long waiting lists because it made them feel powerful. That controversial comment was followed by the announcement that 7.9m had been set aside in Wednesday's budget for child and adolescent psychiatric services.

Prof Patricia Casey Not nearly enough, according to Patricia Casey, professor of psychiatry at the Mater Hospital.

"The proportion of the health budget that has been spent on psychiatry has actually decreased by about 3%-4% over the last eight years if you check it in accordance with inflation, " she said. "I'm appalled at the allocation of funds. Clearly, psychiatry is not a priority for the government, because there are no votes there."

Casey said that if more money was not directed towards mental-health services, there would be serious consequences. "We are going to have tragedies, there is no doubt about that, " she told the Sunday Tribune. "And when it happens, psychiatrists cannot be held responsible. Because it will be as a result of not having adequate facilities, such as a young person dying of anorexia nervosa because there are no beds, or a doctor being attacked by an extremely disturbed person who cannot get the intensive care they need."

In every stream of the mental health services, there are serious deficiencies, said Casey. "We have no in-patient facilities for the homeless and mentally ill, and we are grossly deprived of acute beds, " she said. "For people who are highly disturbed, the only intensive care service for them is in St Brendan's, and that is bursting with people.

If one thing could be fixed immediately, it would be the provision of acute beds. But right now, we have a minister for the mentally ill who has said he doesn't think acute beds are the answer to the problem and that psychiatrists are artificially inflating the waiting lists. That doesn't make me frustrated, it makes me angry . . . that a whole section of the population is suffering, and we have a minister making comments like that."

Mr Maurice Neligan O'Malley's comments have also been criticised by former cardiac surgeon Maurice Neligan, who said it "beggars belief" that a minister for mental health would make such a comment. "When people make statements like that, they should really reconsider their position, " he said. "I also cannot believe that the Taoiseach is standing behind him.

You get the feeling you can do anything in government now, and not be held responsible."

In relation to the vast sums of money being pumped into the health service, Neligan said he didn't believe it would fix any of the fundamental problems.

"I would have very major misgivings about throwing more money into a system that doesn't work, " he said. "When the HSE was created, we got double the administration with no clinical benefits.

The entire system is a mess. We need new faces and new thinking at all levels. We need someone who can stand up to the pressure groups and be prepared to lose power in the next election. The people who are running the health service at the moment are the people who have made it the mess that it is. We cannot expect those same people to suddenly fix the problems. I do not think Mary Harney is capable of solving this problem.

I do think there are other people in government who could."

Neligan said the 3m that had been allocated to strengthen nursing home inspections next year was a "total waste" of resources. "If the inspections are run by the HSE, then it's a waste of time and money, " he said. "We all know from bitter experience that the HSE should not monitor the HSE.

That's what happened with Leas Cross, when the HSE knew all about it and still did nothing. We need an independent inspectorate, and anything else isn't worth a thing."

There is also a major problem with the percentage of the health budget that goes towards pay, said Neligan. "At least 70% of all that money is going towards wages, " he said. "That may have something to do with the fact that when the HSE was created, no one lost their job. So now we have ridiculous duplication in administration all across the board, while at the cutting edge of medicine, the doctors and nurses are missing. There doesn't seem to be any joined-up thinking or rationale. For example, they're talking about increasing medical school places, when the final-year medical students who are there already can't find internship placements and have to go abroad. Throwing money at it is not going to fix anything."

Ms Orla Hardiman While this may be true, one area in particular is crying out for more funding. The 4m that is expected to go towards neurology services is "not even going to remotely" address the understaffing and underfunding of the sector, according to consultant neurologist at Dublin's Beaumont hospital Orla Hardiman.

"We would need six times that amount, just for starters, in neurology alone, " she told the Sunday Tribune. "And we'd need at least the same investment again for neurosurgery. In neurology, when we finally get to see the patients, we can't provide the care they need due to lack of facilities, and that has massive implications for waiting lists. It has to change, and I'm still hopeful that it will. We are meeting with the HSE in the coming weeks, and hopefully that will drive forward the change."

Prof Ciaran Bolger But for neurosurgery, new infrastructure and major investment is the only way to improve the "woefully inadequate" services, according to Professor Ciaran Bolger, who holds the chair of neurosurgery at Beaumont.

"We are playing catch-up for chronic underfunding, " he said. "The existing building is inadequate. We need a new building, and that is going to cost up to 50m. We don't even come up to the standards of a safe neurosurgery report issued in 2000. We are unsafe by 2000 standards. The staff know it, and they are very uneasy. There is already litigation in the pipeline against some of my colleagues, and undoubtedly there will be more. We have hundreds of people on the urgent waiting list, and in neurosurgery, 'urgent' means life-threatening.

You cannot afford delays."

Bolger also said a reform of the HSE administration was the key to fixing the health service.

"The people there at the moment are not capable of running it, " he said. "It's a money pit.

There doesn't seem to be any rationalisation as to how the money is spent. Such huge amounts, and such huge waste."