But it is by no means the only one. The government has yet to publish its long awaited Review into Laboratory Services. The report, which is known to recommend a major rationalisation of services, significant job cuts and the awarding of tenders to the private sector, mightn't sound too exciting.

But, given the problems that have arisen in recent times with pathology services, including Friday's revelations from Portlaoise, and the report's finding that the quality of the current system is simply "not good enough", it is far too important to be put on the long finger.

The explanation for the delay is classic social partnership speak: "It has not been published yet because it is being reviewed by the relevant stakeholders in advance of its publication." Just to translate, that effectively means: the unions don't like the idea of the job cuts and the government hasn't the bottle to take them on. So instead the report will disappear into the twilight zone that is (God help us all) the Health Forum, where the social partners will sit around a table, scratch their chins and, basically, nothing will happen.

In the case of the Review into Laboratory Services, the 'stakeholder' should be the man or woman who has to go into hospital for a diagnosis and depend on the accuracy and speed of the test results.

But in the world of social partnership, the people are almost incidental. Social partnership is the ultimate insiders' club with the public-sector unions as the main players.

Nothing happens without their say-so. Nothing moves without their agreement. The people may be crying out for a new airport terminal, a new maternity hospital in Cork, access to a driving test or reforms in the health service (or perhaps just a new light bulb in Ward No 2), but that is very much secondary to ensuring the workers' interests are looked after.

In recent days, the groups representing hospital consultants have apparently agreed, bless 'em, to allow the HSE to begin recruiting badly needed new consultants on 'an interim basis'. The organisations, according to reports, would agree to a recruitment process for a limited number of consultants getting under way on the assumption that negotiations on a new overall agreed contract would be successfully concluded before new doctors are appointed. So our democratically elected government has to wait until highly paid consultants say it's ok to begin spending taxpayers' money on hiring new highly paid consultants, despite them being desperately needed . . . it would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious.

Advocates of social partnership argue that since its inception it has delivered unprecedented industrial relations harmony. Of course it has. Why wouldn't it? If the public sector unions are guaranteed decent pay increases every year, plus a hefty increase under benchmarking every few years, and a virtual veto on any major government decision with even the remotest impact on their members, why would they rock the boat? There has been huge attention on the pay increases given to government ministers and rightly so.

Our politicians have in a few short years gone from being chronically underpaid to being seriously overpaid, but that scenario is by no means confined to politicians.

The whole public sector has done tremendously well out of benchmarking.

There is an argument that that is as it should be. We should pay our public servants . . . particularly the likes of teachers, nurses, consultants and government ministers . . . well. Fair enough, but what has been given, in the shape of public-sector reform, in return for the very large pay increases that have been granted to the public sector over the past decade? The answer is virtually nothing.

In Saving the Future, a new book on social partnership, there is a quote from the secretary-general of the Department of the Taoiseach Dermot McCarthy, comparing partnership to a "muscle" because "the more it's used the stronger it gets. . . It brings people together and encourages them to be minded to solve problems, rather than [to] create or exacerbate them, and do it in a way which respects parameters that everybody agrees are either necessary or desirable."

With all due respect to McCarthy . . . who is a fine public servant . . . that is utter hogwash. Peering in from the outside, far from solving problems, social partnership appears to put them on the long finger and has an utterly paralysing impact on government. There is, of course, a lot to be said for consensus politics . . . as opposed to just ramming through measures . . . but whose consensus is being served? In the same book, Forfas chairman Eoin O'Driscroll, although a backer of partnership, warns of the emerging concern among those in the US multinational sector that the process now centres around public servants who are "the ultimate employer negotiating with themselves".

It is not just multinationals that should be concerned about this. Every citizen in the state should be worried that an elite club is essentially putting its own interests before the common good. O'Driscroll doesn't want to see the abandonment of partnership but he would like a "rekindled version" . . . one that is "highly competitive" and ensures reform in the public sector.

That is the very least we, as citizens in a republic that is supposed to cherish all its people equally, should expect.