ANY PROPOSALS put forward by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to make staff redundant will have to be approved by the Government, according to Minister for Health Mary Harney.
Ms Harney said the HSE had proposals in relation to redundancies but stressed no decision had yet been made in relation to them.
A redundancy plan was not “imminent”, she added.
“The HSE have proposals. I support the work they are doing to put in place the appropriate structure but it would be premature for me to comment on what might or might not happen at the end of the day.”
Ms Harney was responding to a report in yesterday’s Irish Times that the HSE had proposed to the Government that 200 senior managerial and 800 lower-level clerical and administrative posts in the organisation should go as part of a voluntary early retirement scheme.
The Minister said she wanted to see “an appropriate staffing level in the HSE”.
She added: “I strongly support the appropriate staffing level in every area, whether it’s in the clinical area in the case of nursing or healthcare professions like therapists or in relation to doctors and back up staff like management and administration.
“We want to see the appropriate ratios and over the last while the HSE, with the support of the department, have been involved in a major exercise of looking at the organisation from a management and administrative point of view.”
Ms Harney also said any redundancies in the health system would be on a voluntary basis “but we have to make sure that we agree the appropriate structure before we proceed with any redundancy plans”.
She said McKinsey consultants was assisting the HSE on these structures and that work was not yet complete. Asked if there would be money to fund 1,000 redundancies at a cost of up to €30 million, she said the first priority would be to redeploy staff if there were too many in one area and not enough in another.
“But it’s far too early to speculate about what might happen, what the costs might be on a once-off basis and what the ongoing savings might be if we were to reduce the cost of administration and management and divert that resource to clinical sources.”
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan told reporters in Dublin yesterday that a detailed submission had yet to be made to his department on the redundancy proposals.
Asked if the HSE was top-heavy with managers, he said: “I think it has been recognised since the HSE was formed that there has been considerable difficulty in integrating the former health board structures into the new HSE structure and clearly you know we pay the HSE executive to do this job.
“So I do welcome the fact that they are formulating proposals and I will examine them when I receive them”.
The Impact trade union, which represents the majority of managerial and administrative staff in the HSE, said the HSE had not consulted it about its proposals.
Impact general secretary Peter McLoone said the union was aware that Ms Harney had said last autumn there might be scope for a redundancy programme in the HSE. However, he had raised the issue in the health service forum but management had provided no details.
Mr McLoone said he had expected the HSE would not produce proposals for Government until after McKinsey had reported.
He said in areas such as childcare and child development, there were huge demands for support services and that consideration should be given to transferring staff considered surplus to these areas rather than letting them go.