CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS cannot be interfered with "willynilly", Taoiseach Brian Cowen insisted, as he was challenged not to allow bonus payments to senior Health Service Executive (HSE) personnel to go ahead.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny called in the Dáil for Mr Cowen to disallow a €1.4 million bonus payments system for senior executives.
Such bonuses are unjustified when an average of 300 people are on trolleys in AE every day, when there have been serious cases of cancer misdiagnosis and "where there are 1,200 acute beds unused", he said.
His comments echoed those of Padraic McCormack (FG, Galway West) who, on Tuesday night, told the Dáil that HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm would be paid €1,700 every working day if he received an €80,000 bonus on top of his €380,000 salary, at a time of "savage cuts".
The HSE has said no decision had been made on the bonus payment to Prof Drumm.
Mr Cowen said, however, that "clearly I would expect the board of the HSE to take into account the new economic situation that we are contending with", but "you can't decide to break conditions of employment willy-nilly. You have to make sure that the performance-related criteria are stringent, are ambitious. And the HSE board are the people who make those decisions and that's quite rightly the position."
The Fine Gael leader said that "President Sarkozy said no more bonuses and no more dividends. And it's the same thing in America and Britain - and here we are now, under your tutorship, having agreed a 20 per cent increase in bonus payments for the HSE when decimation faces many areas of our health service."
The bonus scheme was being put in place for next year, yet in next week's Budget, "there will be cuts of at least 300,000 hours in home help, no walking aids, no wheelchairs, no new physios appointed, no occupational therapists appointed, no speech therapists appointed, a serious curtailment of homecare packages. With the result that the vulnerable, those very people who sustained these people in the creation of the Celtic Tiger, are going to be neglected."
He added that "whatever else you have to do in respect of the able-bodied people of the country, do not take out the political cleaver to the quality of life and the lives of the vulnerable".
Mr Cowen stressed: "Obviously the Government is doing all it can to try and maintain, to the greatest extent possible, the service levels we've built up over time. But we are in the new economic situation."
Mr Kenny said the bonus scheme should not be paid, especially "where you've allowed another million to be spent on consultancy" to "point out" how the HSE should be "deconstructed" because "it has failed".
But defending the payment, the Taoiseach said it was to ensure "that we have a management system that interrelates between the community care system and the acute hospital system".
"And they are making some changes to make sure that join-up is that. That's a good thing."
He added that a lot of work had also been done on reviewing personnel management and indicated that the Minister for Finance would announce redundancy proposals in next week's Budget.
"This is all part of a huge massive reorganisation in the health service and, despite all that's been said by the Opposition, there have been measurable improvements in what's been taking place in a whole range of activities," said the Taoiseach.
"And there are many people who are using the health service who are far more satisfied than they have been in the past."
