THE MORATORIUM on recruitment in the health service has been criticised by the new chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Cathal Magee.
He said yesterday there were “inflexibilities” with the ban which have a direct impact on services for patients.
Agency nurses, he added, were having to be engaged to do jobs that cannot be filled with the moratorium and given these are more costly, it “does not make long-term sense”, he said.
During his first appearance before the Oireachtas health committee, Mr Magee said the ban has cost implications, impacts on quality and leads to a lack of consistency in care for patients.
He said these issues were being discussed with the Department of Health.
However Minister for Health Mary Harney, who was also before the committee, ruled out any lifting of the ban, as did the four-year recovery plan published on Wednesday.
She said some staff were exempted from the ban and she claimed many of the 6,000 HSE staff who go on maternity leave each year are replaced despite the moratorium.
Meanwhile Mr Magee released figures showing 56 per cent of general managers in the HSE have applied to leave the organisation under the recent voluntary redundancy or early retirement schemes. Some 138 of the 248 general managers in the HSE applied to go.
A quarter of the 484 grade eight staff in the HSE which would include accountants, human resources specialists and senior hospital administrators have also applied to depart as have 42 per cent of the 118 assistant national directors in the organisation.
Several committee members expressed concern that 582 management and administrative staff in HSE West had applied to leave, which was higher than the 414 wishing to go in HSE South, the 326 wishing to depart HSE Dublin Mid Leinster and the 296 wanting to leave HSE Dublin North East.
Mr Magee cautioned the figures may change and some applicants may withdraw given the tight timeframe they had to consider their applications and the economic climate. Applicants have until the end of this month to make a final decision. But the percentages of staff wishing to leave each region were proportionate, he said. Some 21 per cent of management and administrative staff had applied to leave HSE West compared to 23 per cent in Dublin Mid Leinster, 24 per cent in Dublin North East and 26 per cent in HSE South.
Asked about the contingency plans the HSE had made for large numbers of staff leaving before the end of the year – some 3,775 staff have applied to leave overall and 2,380 of these are in management or administrative grades – Mr Magee said there were risks but the big challenge will be to ensure there is no impact on frontline services.
There may be transition difficulties in the first few months of 2011, he said, given that all those leaving have to depart by the end of December.
“A series of contingency plans are being drawn up to deal with potential gaps that will appear once these significant numbers of staff exit at the end of December.
“There will be a need to simplify and streamline our management and administrative structures. We are working closely with staff and the representative bodies, under the auspices of the Croke Park Agreement,” he said.
Unions met the HSE to discuss contingency planning again yesterday.