Labour reform plan calls for HSE job cuts

THE LABOUR Party has called for the introduction of a redundancy scheme for senior health service managers, the restoration of full political accountability in the health sector, and greater autonomy for hospitals and community care areas in how they spend their budgets, as part of proposed reforms of the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Speaking at the publication of a six-point reform plan yesterday, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the HSE in its present form was not working. He said there were valid arguments that the establishment of the HSE had been rushed and involved overlaying one set of bureaucracy with another.

The party described the HSE as a “bureaucratic Frankenstein”, but its reform document said the health crisis was too urgent to allow for the luxury of going back to the drawing board.

It has proposed that clear lines of authority, responsibility and reporting within the HSE should be established. It said the determination of standards should be at national level, with as much day-to-day decision-making as possible devolved to local level.

It called for the Minister for Health to be made answerable to the public through the Dáil for all aspects of health policy.

It also said there should be a voluntary early retirement, redundancy and redeployment scheme within the HSE.

Labour health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said that, while the party had no specific figures in mind, it wanted to take out layers of higher-level personnel and keep staff at the coalface. Each hospital and community care area should have autonomy to spend its budget and should have a patient liaison programme. A spokesman for Minister for Health Mary Harney said she was politically accountable to the Dáil on health matters.