NEARLY THREE dozen jobs are to go at the Mercy hospital in Cork due to the hospital's budgetary difficulties, the Oireachtas Health Committee was told yesterday.
Cork Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen outlined plans for the job losses and asked the HSE's chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm how that squared with claims by him that there were no cutbacks being imposed and no recruitment embargo.
"Don't anybody tell me that that's not going to impact on quality of services for people that are sick and vulnerable," he said. He added that the hospital's new AE unit could only open part-time because of staffing shortages.
Prof Drumm said the Mercy hospital was a voluntary hospital and while it got a budget from the HSE, the HSE did not manage it. He said the hospital was now "way over budget".
He also reiterated it was for the hospital to open its AE within its existing resources. He said it already had significant staffing with 120 doctors and 400 nurses for 27 admissions a day.
In a statement later, the Mercy hospital said: "Due to budgetary constraints, Mercy University Hospital has reluctantly decided not to renew contracts for 35 temporary personnel across a number of departments in the hospital."
Meanwhile, Cork Labour TD Kathleen Lynch told the committee there were two theatres idle at the new Cork University Maternity Hospital because there were no staff to sterilise its surgical instruments.
Prof Drumm said Cork University Hospital had about 3,500 staff. "I doubt more staff will be provided within the context of that level of staffing already in place."
Meanwhile, Prof Drumm confirmed he would travel to Roscommon Hospital next week to speak to staff about HSE plans to transfer acute inpatient surgery services from the hospital to Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway.
He said there was nothing like the workload required to maintain acute surgical services in several hospitals across the country including Roscommon.
He would not say how many misread X-rays had been uncovered to date in the course of a review of about 6,000 X-rays read by a locum consultant radiologist in the north east. The review is due to be completed next month.
On a separate issue, Cavan-Monaghan TD Margaret Conlon (Fianna Fáil) told the committee that families of people who died in the northeast could be waiting up to three days for postmortem examinations to be carried out on their loved ones. Prof Drumm undertook to look at the problem.
Also at the meeting Tom Finn, acting director of the HSE's national hospitals office, said that 50 per cent of the capacity in the State's cytology labs would no longer be required now that smear tests are to be outsourced to Quest Diagnostics in the US as part of the roll out of a national cervical screening programme.
He said there were 70 staff working in this area and discussions would have to take place with their union around redeploying some of them.
The HSE also confirmed it has made a submission to Minister for Health Mary Harney on using money allocated for the Fair Deal scheme this year, which has been delayed, to give people paying for nursing home care enhanced subvention payments. Ms Harney said she would make a decision soon on the application.
She also confirmed the HSE's projected deficit for this year is now €300 million.