MORE THAN 1,500 posts in the health service are to go over the coming year under the terms of a new directive on employment numbers, agreed by the Department of Finance and the Department of Health.
The Department of Health has told the Health Service Executive (HSE) in recent days that the numbers employed should fall to 108,833 by the end of the year.
It said that overall, the Government is seeking to reduce the number of health service staff by 4,560 by the end of 2012, with 1,520 posts going this year. A Department of Health spokesman said last night the reduction would come about through the operation of the moratorium on recruitment and the incentivised early retirement scheme.
The Government signalled in the proposed public service reform deal a fortnight ago that it wanted to “substantially” reduce the number of State employees over the coming years and that this would be implemented by means of new employment control frameworks covering various parts of the public service. The new health service employment control framework is the first of these documents to emerge.
The framework sets out the official staffing levels for the year, authorises the appointment of additional staff in specific areas and gives the HSE flexibility to fill critical vacancies as long as the employment targets are met.
It says that the objective of the new employment framework is to reduce the numbers of management, administrative and non-frontline staff in the health service as well as to redeploy staff from the hospital and corporate areas of the HSE to primary, community and continuing care settings.
It also allows for a relaxation, to a degree, of the moratorium on recruitment which has been in place for the past year.
The new plan allows for an additional 265 posts to be filled as part of the implementation of the Ryan report. The document also permits for the appointment of up to 100 psychiatric nurses to facilitate the implementation of the Government’s strategy document in the mental health area. It says there will also be an exemption from the moratorium to facilitate the recruitment of 70 student public health nurses.
The report also says an exemption will be provided to allow for 79 posts in enhanced cancer services. However, it says posts with equivalent salary values will have to be simultaneously suppressed in non-priority areas to meet the cost involved.
The new framework document also lets senior HSE management fill “critical posts” in areas other than management and administrative grades as long as it reduces staff numbers by 1,520.
“Such exceptions may be made where the HSE has satisfied itself that there are compelling reasons for doing so in order to maintain essential frontline services. The HSE can implement the moratorium in a way which supports its transformation priorities such as the reconfiguration of services in the northeast, the move from institutional to community mental healthcare . . . and the continued roll-out of primary care teams,” it states.