HSE CHAIRMAN Liam Downey has told Minister for Health Mary Harney that a voluntary retirement/redundancy programme would be necessary to support its planned new regionalisation structures.
In a letter to Ms Harney outlining the HSE's reform proposals, he also said it would be necessary to develop an appropriate package of measures for staff retraining and re-deployment.
Mr Downey said the implications for staffing at all levels would have to be evaluated, but that the overall goal would be to "de-layer and simplify as far as practical".
In his letter to Ms Harney, which was sent at the end of May, the HSE chairman also revealed that it was provisionally proposed that there should be eight new administrative areas in which services would be delivered at a local level.
However, he also said that more work was required to finalise the optimum number of areas.
Mr Downey's letter also spells out more of the details of the HSE reform proposals.
He said that under the reforms, at national level the current posts of head of the National Hospitals Office and the primary community and continuing care pillar would be integrated and replaced by a new national director for service delivery.
"Below the national level we envisage a number of service delivery areas under area directors who will report to the national director service delivery.
"The national director service delivery and the area directors will be accountable for service delivery and will not have responsibility for operational policy matters in relation to individual care groups/programmes," he said.
Mr Downey said that national care groups/programme "leads" will be appointed who will report to the proposed new national director for planning to cover areas such as children/youths, older people, disability/mental health, acute hospitals and community care.
It was generally believed for some time that the HSE was looking at a redundancy scheme in the health service to go hand in hand with its new structural reforms.
However, this had not been confirmed publicly.
The Irish Timesrevealed in May that the HSE had sought official permission from the Department of Health for a redundancy scheme for up to 1,000 personnel, including 200 senior managers, at a cost of €30 million.
In July the Government in principle sanctioned a voluntary redundancy scheme for health service staff as part of an overall package of financial cutbacks.
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said his department and the Department of Health would draw up proposals for a targeted scheme to reduce surplus staff in the HSE.
He said consideration would also be given to extending this scheme on a selected basis to other public service agencies.