Madam, – “The HSE’s pay bill has not reduced by the amount deducted from the HSE as a result of the public sector pay rate changes” (Home News, July 12th). Yet there is a moratorium on recruitment, vacancies not being filled, posts suppressed. Surely this should reduce the “pay bill”? Not so in the Alice in HSE-land management of staffing. Agency staff and overtime prop up the system, while newly qualified personnel languish on the dole, or head for job opportunities abroad.
As long as the “employment ceiling” is reduced there seems to be a bottomless pot to pay agency and overtime. The cost per unit hour of an agency nurse is about €37. Overtime is one-and-a-half times the cost per hour. The cost of a first-year staff nurse is approximately €15 plus approximately €3 employers’ PRSI per hour.
As a barrier to recruitment of newly qualified staff we are told the HSE pay-costs towards pensions are far more expensive to the employer than agency and overtime. My payslip does not divulge what the HSE pays towards my pension. But from my calculations on my expected pension, I’m paying the cost of it.
Will somebody with a modicum of common sense please see the indecency of withholding jobs and experience to newly qualified staff? Have we learned nothing from the closures of training facilities in the 1980s and the lack of qualified staff in the 1990s? It won’t be the pay bill that will be reduced if this lunacy continues. It will be patient quality, safety and staff morale. – Yours, etc,