THE HEALTH Service Executive has a €29 million hole in its pension provisions for this year, it has emerged.
A report presented to the HSE board earlier this month confirmed that pension costs in the organisation were showing a deficit of €29 million at the end of May. It added that the shortfall was “not foreseen at the start of the year”.
It also signalled the shortfall could have to be made up for by cuts in planned services later in the year.
It said while changes to the HSE’s 2009 service plan were not required at present to meet the deficit “this may be necessary at a later date”.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said yesterday that the HSE pays its pensioners from its annual allocation from Government as well as from the collection of superannuation deductions from its employees.
It said the deficit had arisen as a result of more people retiring this year than had been expected and so budgeted for.
The spokeswoman confirmed that a total of 329 employees had retired through age and service at the end of May, an increase of 57 per cent on last year.
“The figure of 329 are employees that have a normal option to retire and have taken it rather than availing of a particular scheme,” she said.
Additional numbers of employees in the HSE have applied for the Government’s new early-retirement scheme but the HSE has suspended the operation of scheme for the present as part of a row with trade unions over instructions given to members not to co-operate with redeployment arrangements in the civil service.
The HSE believes that the redeployment of staff is crucial to facilitate the departure of employees under the scheme while still keeping services in operation.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, when the head of the HSE Prof Brendan Drumm said the organisation was facing a €1 billion shortfall – which has since been revised downwards – a plan was drawn up to cut costs by closing hospital beds, laying off temporary staff and cutting home help services.
The report given to the HSE board now shows the extent to which home help hours have already been cut.
At the end of May 225,095 fewer home help hours had been provided than at the same time last year.
In addition the report says that the HSE had an overall deficit of €83 million at the end of May, with the west/northwest and midwest hospital networks responsible for €23 million of this.