THE HEALTH Service Executive is today expected to discuss plans to introduce cutbacks of between €150 million and €200 million to build up a reserve fund for dealing with the potential fallout from industrial action by staff.
The fund will be used to shore up any financial shortfall that may be developing unseen in the absence of the official data on spending patterns.
As a result of industrial action at the HSE, the executive says it does not know how its €14 billion budget is being spent and whether it is achieving the €400 million savings required this year.
The HSE’s national crisis management team, which comprises top-level management, is expected to consider plans to establish the reserve of up to €200 million today. Highly placed sources said planned cutbacks would involve “a slowdown in activity”, including cancelling elective admissions to hospital, cutting home-care packages and reducing the hours worked by home-helps.
The HSE’s national crisis management team is also expected to consider a process for removing staff involved in the industrial action from the payroll.
Minister for Health Mary Harney last night signalled she would back the HSE in its dispute with the trade union Impact over the provision of key financial and activity data.
The Minister said she could not justify a situation in the HSE where staff were being paid when they were not doing their jobs.
“How can you justify 20,000 people in the health service being paid for three months and not doing their job? You cannot justify that and it cannot continue,” she said.
Ms Harney said she had full confidence in HSE management to deal with this situation. She said she would have preferred for both sides to come to an agreement but that had not been possible.
“But if people aren’t doing their jobs at a time when taxpayers’ finances are very constrained then the management in the HSE have to ensure that money is not spent for work that’s not done,” she said.
Sources said the cost-cutting plan could involve either money being “top-sliced” from the budgets of HSE services around the country or the various regions of the organisation being asked to make new savings.
The HSE is also expected to again consider a process whereby staff refusing to collect, collate and transmit the financial and activity data would be given a deadline to perform their duties or face being taken off the payroll after seven days.
The latest moves in the row over the industrial action come after talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) ended without agreement. The HSE had sought a derogation for the compilation of the financial and activity data from the scope of the industrial action.
Impact said it could not do so until it received clarifications on the implications, particularly in relation to job security, of the new Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform on the terms of an agreement signed in 2004 on the abolition of the former health boards.
In a bulletin to members, Impact yesterday accused the HSE of seeking to intimidate members into abandoning industrial action with warnings of potential disciplinary action.
It said its objective at the LRC was to ensure there was clarity over how proposals in the Croke Park deal would relate to the terms of the 2004 agreement.
It said it also sought a number of other clarifications on aspects of the proposed agreement.
It is understood these centred on plans to standardise terms and conditions for staff across the public service.
The union is also understood to have sought some assurances on outsourcing and in relation to pharmacy reforms and the introduction of performance management arrangements.