The board of Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin has said it is confident of resolving a €16 million funding deficit without affecting services to patients.
The hospital was warned by the Health Service Executive that it faces the huge shortfall unless it cuts spending, it was reported in The Irish Timestoday.
The HSE also said the hospital has more than 100 employees above the limit allowed under its employment ceiling, and it must bring its number of staff down to approved levels. The HSE said it was aware that reducing employment numbers will have implications for service delivery but it is imperative that the hospital takes action.
In a statement this morning, the hospital board said the letter was part of "routine dialogue" between it and the HSE about budgetary requirements.
"The HSE has to date been fully supportive of the hospital in carrying out its role as national tertiary paediatric centre and in continuing with its current level of activity," it said. "It has been HSE policy not to reduce services and the Board of Directors at Our Lady's are confident that children's services in particular will continue to operate on this basis.
"It is anticipated that the issue of funding shortfall will be resolved with the support of the HSE."
The HSE said today the talks were part of an ongoing process and it had raised similar concerns last year about finances with hospital management.
"By the end of 2006 the hospital had remained within budget and there had been no staff cut backs or redundancies," the HSE said.
The hospital's chief executive, Michael Lyons, said in a letter to the HSE a week ago that the 2007 financial allocation for the hospital of €122.4 million for 2007 has been an effective decrease in real funding equivalent to 9 per cent. He argued the budget should be about €139 million.
