Varadkar to reverse fall in number of nurses in public hospitals

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said he intends to reverse the fall in the number of nurses working in the public health service in the coming year.

He also said he hoped to advertise about 200 consultant posts if agreement on salary scales could be reached with the Irish Medical Organisation.

The Minister also said it appeared that 85 senior personnel in voluntary hospitals and health agencies, who are seeking to retain controversial top-up payments paid in addition to salary, had a contractual entitlement to the money.

Mr Varadkar was speaking in a Dáil debate on revelations in The Irish Times that the number of senior mangers in public hospitals had increased by more than 10 per cent since 2011 at a time when there had been a reduction in the number of nurses and support staff.

The HSE had told the health service joint monitoring committee in September that the bulk of this increase had come about as a result of a regularisation process agreed under the Haddington Road agreement on public service pay and productivity.

Mr Varadkar said the agreement made provision for the regularisation of long-term acting posts.

“Under the agreement employees who had been working in an acting capacity at a higher grade for a period of two years up to December 31st, 2012, were to be appointed to these posts on a permanent basis as long as certain conditions were met.

"Close to 400 staff in the management and administration category have been regularised in this process, including the 30 senior managers referred to in the article in The Irish Times ."

Principles

He said that under the exact same principles an additional 848 nurses and midwives, 248 social and care professionals, and 26 doctors and dentists had had their positions regularised.

Sean Fleming of Fianna Fáil said he was shocked to hear that the agreement seemed to be increasing public service costs.

Mr Varadkar said the accord had resulted in significant expenditure savings, but it also contained “an amount of give and take”.

“Among the things given back was that people who had been acting up and working in a post above their official posts were upgraded into those posts.

Special deal

“This provision was part of the agreement and it was applied across the board, it was not some form of special deal which only applied to senior managers.”

The Minister said he accepted that the number of nurses had decreased and this was an issue he intended to reverse in the coming year.

The number of staff nurses has fallen by 744 over the last three years but there has been a rise in the number of midwives.

The Minister said there remained an argument about top-up payments for 85 managers.

“ It appears that the people are contractually entitled to those payments. The alternative is to go to law, but the HSE must ensure that it does not incur significant costs in legal fees only to lose the case.

“ It would make much more sense not to end up spending a fortune on legal fees if the HSE is contractually obliged to make those payments,” said the Minister.