Former Ryanair deputy chief executive Michael Cawley is to be appointed to the board of the HSE by the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.
Mr Cawley is expected to be one of at least two new members appointed to the board in coming weeks to fill vacancies.
He brings to the HSE board a track record of driving efficiencies and productivity at a time when the Minister is seeking far greater progress in this area.
Mr Cawley worked at the airline for 16 years, beginning as its chief financial officer in 1997 before being appointed as deputy chief executive in 2003. He stepped down about a decade ago and has had a number of business interests in the interim.
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Mr Cawley resigned as chairman of the board of the State tourism authority in 2020 after reports that he was on a family holiday in Italy at a time when Fáilte Ireland was promoting domestic holidays and the Government had advised – but not legislated – against non-essential travel.
In recent months Mr Donnelly has been pushing for greater productivity in the health service in the aftermath of large-scale increases in funding and staffing over recent years.
A report published in April and drawn up by personnel in the Irish Government Economic Evaluation Service and the Department of Health said the health budget had risen from €13.7 billon in 2014 to €22.8 billion in 2024 but there was “a large divergence in all sites between the expenditure and workforce provided, relative to the growth in either separate activity metrics or ‘composite’ activity” – an aggregate of in-patients, out-patients, day cases and emergence attendances weighted by unit costs for each area.
“In most cases, the divergence is significant, with the percentage growth in composite activity between 2016 and 2022 either negative, or two times behind workforce growth, and up to three times behind real expenditure growth over the same period,” the report found.
In a later interview Mr Donnelly said the increase in the number of patients treated in the health service was not commensurate with the level of increased resources that has been provided by the exchequer.
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