8,500 staff interested in HSE package

MORE THAN 8,500 Health Service Executive staff have expressed an interest in the voluntary redundancy and early retirement scheme which aims to reduce numbers by up to 5,000.

Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil that management and administrative staff accounted for more than 5,300 of the expressions of interest with 3,150 queries from support staff.

During health questions she stressed that “applications from management and administrative staff will be prioritised over those from support staff and will automatically be approved subject to the overall expenditure cap of €400 million not being breached”.

She stressed, however, that “not everyone who is interested will apply for the scheme. The HSE will not know the actual intentions of staff until the closing date for applications of November 19th. The purpose of the scheme is to achieve a permanent reduction in the numbers employed in the public health service.

“The scheme is confined to those two categories of health service employees. It is not available to civil servants including those serving in my department.”

Ms Harney added that “this is not the first initiative aimed at reducing numbers.

“The number of management and administrative staff has already fallen by over 1,000 from its peak in 2007.”

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly questioned why such a deal could not have been put in place when the executive was established and said that had it been in place “it could have saved over €1 billion, or €200 million a year. I am delighted to hear that there is such interest in the scheme but I’m wondering why it took so long to introduce it.”

He also called for a broadening of the scheme to include staff in the Minister’s department.

The Minister pointed out that staff numbers in the department itself had dropped by 25 per cent from 641 to 477 since 2005.

“The numbers employed in my department have to be reduced further to 450 by the end of 2012 and we will use the appropriate mechanisms such as re-organisation, re-allocation of work including redeployment where necessary to meet this target.”

When people talked about the department she said they “need to realise they’re talking about organisations like the Adoption Board which has 29 employees. So they’re not all in Hawkins House.”

She accepted “there were issues raised around organisational management within the department” but the management team were implementing changes.

The Minister pointed out that “we are the second largest legislation department in the State. There seems to be a view that because we established a single entity with our health services that the role of the department was diminished and it wasn’t.”

She said that when the health executive was established “it wasn’t possible for staff representatives to reach agreement on people being made redundant”. She said the opposition parties were of the same view and “there was a worry at the time that this was part of a big plan to fire thousands of people and that was never the plan.”

They “needed to establish the organisation to see its strengths and weaknesses before you began the restructuring programme and it hasn’t been possible to get either the money or the agreement until now in relation to this. We have it now and let’s make it happen.”