I totally agree that this is an unnecessary function.
Another case of going a little too gungho with the whole refactoring/OO mentality.

Personally I've always found all the get and set functions to be a bit much as well. Frankly, if you don't have a specific need to filter what your private variables get set to, a function call is needless complexity. Just expose the privates (pun semi-intended), access control be damned.