Clarity on Civil Service transition promised

A REPORT on the work of departmental transition teams on the implications for services of the early retirement of public servants will be considered by the Cabinet on Tuesday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

He told the Dáil that Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin would submit a memo on each sector.

“There will be clarity, understanding and a communication to the people about how this will work,” he added.

Mr Kenny said 6,600 public servants were planing to take early retirement.

It was right, he added, that the transition be managed in a proper fashion so that services were not diminished for people who needed them.

That was why there should be transition teams in the five areas of health, education, local government, justice and defence, headed by assistant secretaries in each department.

The line of communication would go down to local planners who would have a clear understanding of how they proposed to continue to provide services following the early retirements.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said he could take it that there were no transition teams in place yet, despite Mr Kenny saying on Sunday that they had been set up.

Mr Kenny said that discussions had taken place for quite some time in the absence of accurate figures. “We now know those figures,” he added.

Mr Martin said chronically ill patients were paying between €120 and €150 to get life-saving medicine because of the nine-month delay in processing medical card applications.

“There is not a deputy in the House who has not been called by people about this issue, especially those who are applying to have their medical cards renewed,” he said.

Mr Martin said the Government should take the practical step of making an executive order stating that those seeking a renewal continue to get their medication under the old card until a decision was made.

Mr Martin said that Minister for Health James Reilly had admitted that public patients would have surgery cancelled.

“These things would not be happening if there had been a planned approach to this particular issue,” he added.

“Why are we getting a constant drip feeding of issues arising out of the difficulties and challenges that are arising from this exodus from the public service?”

He said the public and workers were awaiting certainty and guidance from the Government on the issue.

Mr Kenny said Mr Martin had rightly identified health as being of particular importance.

The Cabinet sub-committee on health had met last week on the issue, and there would be a further meeting later yesterday in his department.

Independent TD Finian McGrath asked if “these wonderful transition teams” would turn up at the accident and emergency department in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, on a Saturday night, and immediately whisk all of the patients on chairs and trolleys into beds.

“Does the Taoiseach now accept that within the next three weeks there could be a crisis in the health service?” Mr McGrath added.

“How will he sort it with 3,000 fewer staff?” Mr Kenny said that 1,433 staff had left the health service last year.

Transition teams would not turn up in Beaumont hospital, or any other hospital, in the middle of the night and do what Mr McGrath had suggested.

“There are local managers in each hospital who know who will leave the service by the end of the month, and they will make arrangements with the HSE, working with staff and the unions, to see to it that cover is provided,” Mr Kenny added.