In an interview with the Sunday Tribune, Gerry Robinson, one of Britain's most highprofile and most successful businessmen, said he believed the problems he encountered in the NHS would also be found in the Irish health service.

"I would think you would find exactly the same thing. I bet you it's the same issues, " he said.

Robinson set himself the task of reducing waiting lists at a Yorkshire hospital and the results were screened in a three-part documentary on BBC2 last week entitled Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS?

He discovered the NHS was riddled with practices that "defied belief", but by applying common sense management solutions to the problems, Robinson overcame resistance to change and achieved a reduction in waiting lists.

Robinson, the former chief executive of Granada TV, stressed it was important not to think of the health service as a business, but as a service. However, he told the Sunday Tribune that appointing the best possible managers to run hospitals, paying them really well and giving them real power, was the first step to improving the health service.

"You are spending more money on health than any other area, how can you not seek to get the best person [to run it]? If you don't get a really top class CEO, what chance have you got?"

Warning that hospitals couldn't be expected to work if nobody knew who was running them, Robinson predicted that getting the the right person at the top, giving them three years to run the hospital and eliminating political interference would lead to "amazing" results.

Robinson is critical of the "lunacy" of paying management consultants "a fortune to tell you what you already know, " and has advocated sacking all management consultants employed by the NHS immediately, arguing that those who work in hospitals are best placed to identify problems and their solutions.

While he found the experience "very frustrating" at times, Robinson also said it was very satisfying because the provision of health services was "worthwhile, vital and very important". He said "There's a real upside because you're getting something done."

However, he said the job of running a hospital was for "somebody young, prepared to get old fast." For that reason, he would "definitely not" be interested in repeating the experience in Ireland, but says he would be happy to sit down with the Irish health authorities and pass on what he had learned during his sixmonth stint in Yorkshire.