THE HEALTH Service Executive has told trade unions that it wants to reduce overtime across all grades by 50 per cent next year as part of work practice reforms aimed at saving about €350 million.
HSE management has also said that it wants to save more than €50 million by ending special grants, payments and allowances made to non-consultant hospital doctors.
It has also proposed introducing new centralised arrangements for contract procurement, which it maintained could secure about €25 million in savings.
HSE management and health sector trade unions are currently engaged in intensive talks on work practice reforms, which management has maintained are vital to allow it to live within its financial allocation from the Government next year.
The HSE has received a much lower level of increase in exchequer funding for 2009 than has been the case in recent years. It has also been told to find the funding for a 3.5 per cent increase due to its 110,000 staff next September from its own resources.
This is expected to cost it more than €100 million.
Earlier this month The Irish Timesrevealed that the HSE had proposed a new cost-containment plan which included introducing new restrictions on recruitment, reviewing contracts of temporary staff and reforming annual leave, sick leave and expenses arrangements.
However, the confidential document did not spell out precise costings for the measures proposed.
In a presentation to unions last week the HSE said that it wanted to generate about €350 million in savings from work practice reforms and efficiency measures.
It proposed ending paid meal breaks for non-consultant hospital doctors and estimated that this could generate €25 million.
The HSE said that ending the payment of a living-out allowance for non-consultant hospital doctors could realise €12 million while the suspension of a €4,000 training grant could produce €16 million.
The HSE also argued that in some hospitals there were various "layers of on-call cover". It said that this involved a number of grades of non-consultant hospital doctors being on call in different specialities at any one time. It suggested it could save €100,000 per year by removing each "layer" in each hospital.
The HSE has also forecast that the introduction of a centralised procurement system could save €25 million. However, this could have implications for administrative staff, represented by Impact, who currently arrange procurement contracts on a local basis.
The HSE maintained that a reduction in overtime by 50 per cent could generate savings of about €110 million.
It suggested that this money could be realised partly by restricting some wards to five-day operations and making savings on the use of agency staff currently recruited to provide services on a seven-day basis.
The HSE also proposed a number of one-off measures such as suspending payment for academic courses for staff. It argued that this could save nearly €5 million next year.
It is understood that unions at the meetings last week argued against the proposed changes put forward by the HSE.
Unions are also understood to have put forward a number of principles which they wanted acknowledged by management. These included the protection of services as well as the maintenance of employment and terms and conditions.
Unions have also argued that they could not accept proposed changes in areas such as travel and subsistence and sick leave for health service staff as these are governed by agreements spanning the entire public service.
HSE management is expected to respond to union concerns at meetings later this week.