Management and staff will be fully consulted on a plan to slash over €900 million from the health services budget next year, Taoiseach Brian Cowen insisted today.
The Health Service Executive said yesterday it wants to cut an additional €400 million on top of the €530 million savings outlined in its annual service plan.
Unions want to bring alternative cost-cutting proposals to the Government which they say will not impact so heavily on patient care.
The HSE’s national service plan outlining spending for 2009 includes plans to review 11 accident and emergency units in Dublin and Cork in a bid to trim its annual €14 billion budget.
The plan was published yesterday, but it was completed in October, and the HSE said it was now “dated” in light of current economic conditions.
Mr Cowen told the Dáil today the plan will require "more than ever" the active involvement of staff at all levels to make the changes necessary to deliver it.
"The goals we wish to see across all areas can only be achieved with real co-operative engagement between management and staff, with commitment to all patients first and foremost," he said. “The whole purpose of driving these efficiencies is to maintain services, not to cut services.”
Planned cutbacks in 2009 would have a “devastating” impact on frontline services, the Irish Nurses’ Organisation said.
It called for an immediate meeting with the Government to discuss the cutbacks and claimed the health service could save up to €113 million by charging private patients using public hospitals for the full economic cost of their care.
Allocating funds from the National Treatment Purchase Fund to the public health service could yield up to €100 million, the INO claimed. It also suggested cutting back on certain advisers paid by the HSE, at what it said was a cost of over €1 million per year.
INO general secretary Liam Doran said: “This is not simply about unions and management engaging in discussions. It is now about seeking to ensure essential patient care is maintained for all those who will require health services in 2009.
“The INO will assess every proposal with reference to its impact upon patients and clients and will play its full part in maximising efficiencies in the interest of maintaining services.”
In the Dáil, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny queried the true impact of the almost €1 billion cuts on waiting lists and patient care.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said there were 390 people in trolleys in A&E units today - ten fewer than when a national emergency was declared in the sector by Minister for Health Mary Harney in 2006.
Mr Cowen said the sums quoted today in relation to health cuts were not HSE figures and added that “resources alone will not provide solutions to the health service”.
“The HSE has put forward a service plan to support the goals they have which is to maintain services to patients and clients,” he said.
“The goals we wish to see across all levels can only be achieved by real cooperative engagement of management and staff from the very start of the year drawing on the commitment of all to patients first and foremost.”
Mr Cowen said: “If you want to portray the health service as being totally dysfunctional in every way, that is your point of view but it is not fair on those in the health service and it is certainly not the experience of the vast majority who receive health services in this country.”
Additional reporting: PA