The interim chief executive of the Health Service Executive has insisted the proposed changes to the health service on January 1st will go ahead as planned and will result in real change for patients and clients.
Mr Kevin Kelly, who was appointed to the role by the Tánaiste last week after Prof Aidan Halligan decided not to take up the job, said he was "very confident" the reforms will "go live" in the New Year.
HSE Chief Executive Mr Kevin Kelly
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Kelly acknowledged the planned reforms will represent the "biggest change programme every in the history of the State". He said it was a "totally practical" programme.
Mr Kelly said he had sent out a detailed circular to 100,000 health service staff last week outlining what will happen in January.
He insisted, despite claims by the Impact trade union, that staff would be consulted about change and that there would be no involuntary redundancies.
"There's no point in making this change just for the sake of reorganisation. It must over time improve lives from the point of view of patients and clients and their families," Mr Kelly said.
Questioned about why people were not seeing the benefits from the major funding pumped into the health services in recent years, Mr Kelly said the reforms would change the environment for patients and clients
"You have to have a belief and a vision and a confidence that it will work. Everything I have seen over the last nine months convinces me it is going to work."
Mr Kelly said all jobs would be retained in the areas impacted would be retained, but that the nature of the jobs might change.
"I have consistently said and the Government have said there will be no involuntary redundancies," Mr Kelly said.
Mr Kevin Callanan, national health secretary of Impact, said his members had sent a message to Mr Kelly that they had "no confidence" in the way the reform process was being dealt with to date.
He said they wanted agreement on a framework that would provide guarantees on basic issues to do with jobs and working conditions. Mr Callanan said there had been delays, indecision, changes of mind and breaches of agreements in implementing the reforms.
He said the whole plan had not been properly detailed and asked that the Health Service Executive sit down to negotiate rather than "bypass" the union.
Impact members did not attend briefing sessions by the HSE last week and have voted by a more than seven-to-one majority for industrial action if certain changes proceed.
Mr Callanan said: "We are not afraid of reform. We want real reform in the health service. We want to bring about a health service that rids the inequity, that rids us of the two-tier system. We want a genuinely reformed health system. But what we don't want is diktat."