Chief executive of the Health Service Executive Prof Brendan Drumm has just been awarded a bonus of about €80,000, it emerged last night. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
Although entitled to an annual bonus of up to 25 per cent of his salary, the amount of the payment at a time when the HSE has imposed a total ban on recruitment and when hospitals are closing beds to curtail massive spending overruns, is bound to raise eyebrows. The bonus is understood to have been agreed by a sub-committee of the HSE board earlier this week.
This is Prof Drumm's second performance-related bonus since he took up the top HSE post just over two years ago. His first bonus, details of which emerged in mid-2006, was for €32,000.
When that payment generated controversy, Prof Drumm said he was amazed because the details of his contract had been in the public domain since he took up his post.
"I'm paid €320,000 and I'm paid on top of that the potential of a 25 per cent bonus," he said then.
Details of his latest bonus have emerged just days after the HSE confirmed that about 100 top managers in the organisation were also to get substantial bonuses for overseeing the transition of the organisation from the old health board structures.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday that children in parts of Dublin who were due to attend for dental appointments today have been told by the HSE that their appointments are cancelled as a result of the ban on recruitment it imposed last week.
Parents in the Inchicore and Ballyfermot areas received letters to say appointments for their children had been cancelled as a new dentist who was due to start work with the HSE this week has had their appointment postponed.
Under the employment freeze people returning from career breaks or taking up new posts during September have been told their jobs have been put on ice until October 1st. The freeze is a bid to save money as the HSE had overspent its budget by €245 million at the end of July.
The letter to parents said: "There is a dentist available for emergencies only in Inchicore clinic at 9am everyday except Tuesday. However, until the freeze is lifted there will be no dentist available for routine check-ups and treatment for your school."
Fine Gael TD for Dublin South Central Catherine Byrne said it was disgraceful that children had been left with no dentist due to the employment freeze.
A HSE spokeswoman said last night it was looking at prioritising the resources of dental surgeons in the area to provide a dental service to the children.
The HSE has also placed a ban on the booking of hotels for meetings to save money but a caller to yesterday's Liveline programme on RTÉ claimed she had just left a hotel in the northeast and seen a table there set for about 18 HSE personnel.
Meanwhile, Alan O'Brien, who took a year out from working as a senior clinical engineering technician at Waterford Regional Hospital to study for an MSc, told the programme he had been left in limbo because he couldn't now return to work but had a mortgage and other bills to pay.
"Management can get their pay increase but I can't come back and earn a living," he said.
He said he couldn't claim social welfare in the interim and wasn't allowed to work for any other agency either.