Health service: Some €585 million was spent last year by the Health Service Executive on extra payments to staff above and beyond their salaries. Almost one-third of the money went on overtime payments while the remainder was paid out for allowances, on-call work, night duty and weekend work. The extra payments represented 14.5 per cent of the HSE's payroll costs of more than €4 billion for 2005.
The data is included in the report from the Comptroller & Auditor General, who found the 22 largest overtime payments, that is payments greater than €100,000, were to junior doctors. Seven of the 22 received overtime payments of between €125,000 and €150,000.
"The three highest earners worked for 3,530, 3,193 and 2,419 hours in 2005 on top of their normal working week of 39 hours. This involved average overtime hours of 75, 68 and 51 hours per week respectively, for 47 working weeks," the report says.
Asked about these the HSE said overtime payments to junior doctors were unsustainable. It said new directions were issued in May this year to hospital managers to say if junior doctors now worked beyond rostered hours it had to have the prior approval of a hospital manager. In addition, the comptroller was concerned the HSE was not complying with the European Working Time Directive, which limited junior doctors' working hours to 58 hours per week since August 2004. The HSE said the directive was being adhered to in full in respect of 30 per cent of junior doctors and that discussions were ongoing with the Irish Medical Organisation to reduce the hours of the other 70 per cent.
The C&AG also looked back at the organs inquiry which took years rather than months and cost a multiple of what was originally intended.
The Department of Health agreed it would have been preferable if provision had been made for interim progress reports, if agreement on how the terms of reference could be interpreted was different, and if the contractual arrangements with the chairwoman Anne Dunne and her legal team had been structured so as to provide certainty for early completion of the work.