The Health Service Executive (HSE) in the west has proposed letting 300 temporary staff go in a move to tackle a potential €91 million financial deficit.
A joint statement issued tonight, however, agreed a framework to allow for local negotiations across the region stretching from Limerick to Donegal with a deadline of August 31st.
Unions and HSE West management have agreed to begin “consultations” at local level early next week to explore “all options” in tackling the potential €91 million financial deficit.
The statement, issued after day-long discussions chaired by the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in Galway, said that it was “agreed that all options to reduce expenditure would be further jointly explored”.
These options would include “non-pay savings, reduced hours, career breaks, unpaid leave, flexibility in the reallocation of staff, and phasing out expenditure on agency staff where possible”.
The statement said that “every effort is being made to minimise the impact on services and employment”, with participants agreeing that discussions had been “positive”.
More than 30 health union representatives and HSE management attended the resumed LRC discussions in Merlin Park Hospital today, with union representatives warning they believed a proposed figure of 300 job losses was masking a much larger figure of up to 1,000 posts, as identified in the recent Mott and McDonald consultancy study commissioned by HSE.
As the discussions continued tonight, there was heated political reaction, with Minister for Social Protection and Galway West TD Éamon Ó Cuív saying he believed that the HSE head office was not dealing with the western region on an “equitable basis”.
“I think all regions should be dealt with equitably, and according to senior [HSE] management in the west this isn’t happening,” Mr Ó Cuív said.
Labour Party president and Galway West TD Michael D Higgins also said that it would appear that the HSE was trying to achieve cuts of five years in a single year.
“Even over five years what is being suggested in a bookkeeping exercise was not, and is not, in the interest of health care provision,” Mr Higgins said. Earlier this week, Galway West independent TD Noel Grealish said he would withdraw his support for the Government if further “frontline” cuts to health services went ahead.
The HSE aims to save money through new efficiencies and value-for-money drives in areas such as procurement of medical supplies, blood products and equipment.
The HSE is also seeking to achieve greater flexibility to redeploy permanent staff from corporate areas to more frontline functions to replace temporary staff.