FOURTEEN NURSES from Letterkenny General Hospital (LGH) lost their jobs this week and another 18 nurses on temporary contracts will leave by October.
The 32 job cuts imposed by the HSE, and confirmed by LGH yesterday, have been labelled as “cynical” and “immoral” by Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) industrial relations officer Noel Treanor.
The 32 nurses are all recently out of education, and had work contracts of less than one year’s duration with the hospital.
“It is unquestionable that this is the reason why these nurses have been let go,” said Mr Treanor.
‘‘They will get no redundancy package because they were not here over two years but also they cannot appeal their contract termination because they will have been here less than one year.”
“It is a cynical and immoral cut by the HSE, but to pretend that the HSE operate any differently is misguided.”
The INO and Siptu claim that a reduction in services at LGH is now inevitable and that the cost containment cuts will jeopardise health facilities for the 147,000 people in Co Donegal.
“This gives the lie to the HSE’s comments that frontline services will not be affected by cutbacks. In Letterkenny, it is only frontline services which will be affected. The HSE need to make tough decisions on a national level but these cuts could lead to service closures at the hospital in the future,” said Mr Treanor.
“The hospital has already indicated to the various unions that they are currently meeting the minimum service levels required.” In a statement yesterday, the hospital said: “Every effort will be made to rearrange work to minimise the impact on patient care, and the situation is being kept under constant review.”
A further five more hospital posts were also cut, including two pharmacists and one radiographer.
The cuts at Letterkenny would save the HSE more than €600,000 annually in salaries, Mr Treanor said.
LGH manager Seán Murphy said yesterday: “LGH is committed to providing the highest standard of patient care and improving access to our services. Our waiting lists are continuing to reduce dramatically.
“However, in a number of services we are continuing to see more patients than we are funded to treat.
‘‘This is unsustainable in the current economic climate. We have been clearly told that no additional funding would be available for LGH this year and we are, therefore, obliged to maintain staffing levels within the funded allocation.”
Of the 14 nurses that have not had their contracts renewed, four have been relocated to other health services and details of other staff whose contracts are not being renewed have been provided to Community Care Services for priority consideration should vacancies arise.
The INO, Siptu and Impact are to continue discussions with local hospital management, in an effort to find alternative work for those not being retained.
LGH, which employs nearly 1,500 staff, had €10 million cut from its €117 million operating budget earlier this year.