Current health service cuts are totally arbitrary and the system is now at breaking point, a health pollcy analyst has warned.

According to Dr Sara Burke, until around a year ago the system had been managing to 'do more with less' - however the health cuts now being made were totally arbitrary.

She said more people were now looking for more care from a system with fewer staff and fewer resources.

Dr Burke, who is a TCD research fellow and journalist, said the system had now reached breaking point. "It cannot do any more with less, based on the resources it currently has."

She said there were now more people waiting for services at every level compared to last year.

Hospital waiting lists had increased and there had been a huge slowing down in the granting of new medical cards this year, with 10,000 fewer discretionary card in the system now compared to the end of last year.

In addition, there were now 2.5 million fewer home help hours now than existed in 2009-2009 despite increased demand and fewer hospital beds, she told the Winter Meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners in Athlone at the weekend.

Dr Burke said attempts at health reform to date had had little tangible effect on service delivery or patients' experience of care.

She believed the introduction of universal health insurance (UHI) by 2016 had run into difficulties. This, she said was because the group had been 'utterly stymied' by Health Minister James Reilly's insistence that the model to be used used should have multiple competing private insurers.

Dr Burke said it had been shown that universal health cover systems that work well in other countries had one primary insurer, rather than a number of insurers.