THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) should take action against staff involved in industrial action rather than make savings by cutting patient services, Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday.
Last night HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm told staff that patients and clients would be affected by its plans to create a €200 million reserve fund to offset budgetary overruns that may be building up as a result of the industrial action.
Senior HSE executives have been asked to identify cutbacks over the coming days.
This could involve cancellation of elective admissions to hospitals, cuts in home help packages and reductions in hours for home helps.
However, Ms Harney said yesterday that in the first instance money had to come “from those who are not doing their job”. “I as Minister for Health could [not] stand over any situation where the HSE could take money away from services to patients and still pay people who aren’t doing their jobs. It is not acceptable to me, to patients or to taxpayers.”
Members of the trade union Impact have been refusing to process key financial and activity data as part of wider industrial action over pay cuts.
The HSE has asked the union to provide a derogation for the financial data. However, Impact has said that it could not do so until it received clarifications on the implications, particularly for job security, of the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform on the terms of an agreement signed in 2004 when the former health boards were abolished.
The HSE has said that it cannot add to the terms of the Croke Park deal. Prof Drumm told staff that those involved in the industrial action had not been performing their core duties and it had “now reached a point where it will have a direct impact on patients and clients”.
He said that as a result of the action HSE management did not know how its €14 billion was being spent and was unable to confirm whether €400 million in cost savings required for this year was being achieved.
Prof Drumm said the HSE had been reluctant to discipline staff as management felt this could precipitate industrial unrest which would have an immediate and detrimental impact on essential frontline services.
He said he hoped there was still an opportunity for the dispute to be dealt with reasonably but the situation was “untenable”.
“In the absence of a resolution in the very near future we will be forced to take a more direct approach to address the situation and this will affect patients, clients and staff. This would be an unfortunate development but it is becoming increasingly inevitable.”
“At the moment we are preparing plans to set aside approximately €200 million from health service budgets to offset budget overruns that may be building up as a result of the industrial action. Implementing these budget reductions will affect patients and clients. If we do not do this, there may be a requirement for actions to be taken later in the year that will have an even greater effect on services,” he said.
Impact national secretary Kevin Callinan said there had been no contact between the parties since talks at the Labour Relations Commission ended earlier this week. He said that the union required the clarifications to allow it ballot members on the Croke Park deal.