Minister for Health Mary Harney today formally announced a redundancy plan for the health service, which she said was aimed at cutting up to 20 per cent from administration costs and tackling duplication and inefficiency.
Ms Harney told the Dáil the targeted, voluntary early redundancy scheme would initially target surplus management and administration staff but would apply to other staff "in due course".
She said it would apply across the Health Service Executive headquarters and at hospital and community level.
Asked if the scheme would target management, specifically those at the higher grades, Ms Harney said: "It is not a matter for me to identify who should stay and who should go.
That is a matter for those who are charged with the management of the organisation."
Ms Harney noted the decision on redundancies in the public service, which she hoped would commence in the HSE in 2009, was reaffirmed by the Minister for Finance in his Budget speech of October 14th.
The HSE had already announced plan in July to modify its structure, including hospital and community structures at national and regional level.
"The purpose of this is to have clear lines of authority and accountability for delivering services to patients from national to local level, and between hospital and community services. Initiatives which will lead to improved efficiencies and the reduction of administrative duplication at all levels of the HSE will be part of the scheme."
Ms Harney said once such example was the plan to create a single, unified organisational structure between a number of hospitals in the Dublin area.
“The aim of this model is to ensure that health service delivery is planned and organised on the basis of a single entity, thus optimising the use of resources, streamlining decision making, harvesting the benefits of critical mass and avoiding waste and duplication.
"It makes sense that if two hospitals are going to operate as a unified entity, then they do not need duplication of payroll, personnel, IT officers and many other backroom services," she said.
This would lead to efficiences of between 10 and 20 per cent in administration costs.
“Similar initiatives at community level will also lead to equivalent efficiencies. As we continue to bring together services such as primary care teams, this provides an opportunity to reduce levels of administration and to facilitate more clinical and clinician engagement regarding the care of patients. I support the rationale for this model of shared service and believe it is very much in line with the health reform programme.”
The Minister said she believed HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm and his staff were the appropriate people to continue to lead the HSE. She said the Minister for Finance will put in place procedures to decide on the level of redundancy within the organisation in 2009 and onwards.
Labour Party health spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said the announcement was an admission that the HSE was "a dysfunctional organisation” that should not have been set up in its current form in the first place.
Ms Harney said, however, that since the establishment of the HSE, there had been a reduction of 10 per cent in the number of managers and an increase of 10 per cent in the number of professionals such as nurses, physiotherapists and consultants.
On the HSE's national service plan for next year, the Minister said her officials received it earlier this week.
She said she had written to the HSE chief executive last month outlining that the plan should avoid service reductions in 2009, that it should protect the "least well-off" and that it should continue the HSE ongoing development programme.
Ms Harney said the allocation should allow the HSE to continue to provide services in 2009 that are "at least in line with those in 2008".
Trade union leaders claimed earlier this week that about 10 per cent of the country's acute hospital beds will be closed next year due to budget cuts.
Union leaders said that at a briefing last Friday on its draft service plan for next year, the HSE said there were nearly 500 beds closed and that a further 600 would be taken out of the system next year.
General secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation Liam Doran said unions were told that there would be 1,090 acute hospital beds closed overall next year.