HEART BEAT:An HSE report shows they can be generous in certain areas – but it's only words, writes MAURICE NELIGAN.
IT’S RAINING again and there is a fox looking in the window. That’s the good news. The rest would appear uniformly bad. We lead the world in abusing children placed in our society’s care. The report was headlined across the world. It is a great place, Ireland of the welcomes.
One aspect of writing a column is that concerned people let you know about things they feel should be in the public domain. They are rightly reluctant to reveal these matters themselves as they fear victimisation within the system.
Many come from within the HSE. I am indebted to the person who drew my attention to HSE circular 015/2009. Much is already known, as it deals with the moratorium on recruitment and promotion in the public service and lists groups of excluded persons in the health service. It’s only seven pages long and appears to be written in English.
Let me share a few nuggets. Under the title “Key Actions 3.1 d) the redeployment of some 2,000 staff from the National Hospital Office and HSE Corporate to the Primary, Community and Continuing Care (PCCC) pillar is required by the end of 2009, to facilitate the development of integrated healthcare”. It continues “this action will be required irrespective of the creation of a single national operations function”: whatever that is supposed to mean. Are these migrant souls to be doctors and nurses thrown into the front line? I think not. Rather they seem to be part of the inexhaustible manpower of this mighty outfit. I nearly wrote “organisation” but that would imply a level of competence hitherto unseen. Rather the prevailing impression would be, as Ovid wrote, ‘Chaos, rudis indegestaque molis’ or chaos, a rough unordered mass (mess).
This manoeuvring of the troops leads me to adapt a traditional rhyme.
Grand Old Professor Drumm, had 111,800 men
He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again
And when they were up, they were up, And when they were down, they were down
And when they were only half way up, They were neither up nor down.
Incidentally, for the historians among you, they lost the battle. History as we all know tends to repeat itself. We can only pray and vote.
Depressingly there is more in this document. For example, as regards the above troop movements; we have – 11.3 ‘re-deployment of some 2,000 staff from NHO and HSE Corporate to Primary Community Continuing Care is a key action for implementation as part of the Government decision’. Wait for it; ‘The reconfiguration of services will involve the redeployment and reassignment of staff as well as providing a far greater level of flexibility across and between grades and functions/agencies on working arrangements. The AEMGs will be required to oversee the implementation of these arrangements. Each AEMG will establish a process to address the issue including arrangements for engagement with unions and staff associations as appropriate. Monthly reports will be made to HSE Corporate for communication to the Department of Health and Children/Department of Finance’. Incidentally, AEMG apparently means Area Employment Monitoring Group. The document is full of similar verbal diarrhoea and I pity the poor ‘hoor’ who has to translate it into Irish.
It is amazing that the HSE, constipated in delivering basic services, can be incontinent with this sort of drivel. Is this what springs from €17 million spent on reports and advisers last year? No wonder we couldn’t vaccinate the little girls.
Another little poisoned dart is thrown at the end of this document which says, ‘Return from career breaks. Only when a live vacancy, where it is deemed critical to fill from a front line service perspective, has been identified at an appropriate grade, can approval be given by an AEMG for the return from career break of existing employees of the HSE/Health Service. Due regard has to be given to the statutory timeline obligation for staff to resume employment in the health service under the career break scheme.’
So, first, it would appear that your career break might prove permanent and, second, that if you can take such a break, that maybe the job shouldn’t have been there anyway.
I noted in the coverage of the Sligo nursing strike that such an eventuality had already occurred among returning nurses. Incidentally, congratulations to these for presiding over the first nurse’s strike in the history of the State. In case it gets lost in the defensive spin from the HSE, the strike was about safe staffing levels and about money or hours. In this service there is no vision and in the words of Proverbs 19, ‘where there is no vision the people perish’.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon