The secretary general of the Department of Health and Children, Michael Scanlan, has strongly criticised the head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) Prof Brendan Drumm for publicly disparaging Government policy on the employment ceiling in the public sector.
In a strongly worded letter, which was copied to the Department of Finance, Mr Scanlan also contended that the HSE was unable to manage the existing policy on staff numbers.
He suggested the HSE had failed to live within the official cap for staffing levels set out by the Government - around 97,500 - even though this had been increased on a number of occasions.
Mr Scanlan also maintained there was no evidence the HSE had sought to free up money for the recruitment of front-line staff such as nurses by limiting administrative positions.
Mr Scanlan's letter was sent in reply to criticism by Prof Drumm of the Government cap on health service staffing numbers at a nursing conference in October.
Prof Drumm had described the measure as "crude" and maintained it was driving up costs as health authorities employed more costly agency personnel to get around the cap on staff numbers.
In his letter Mr Scanlan stated that he had been "very surprised" to read Prof Drumm's comments regarding public sector numbers.
"In the first place this is a Government decision and I do not think it is appropriate for the chief executive officer of the largest public service employer to disparage it. It is particularly inappropriate to suggest that nobody had thought through the policy and I have no idea on what basis you made such an assertion," he wrote.
Mr Scanlan continued that if the current employment cap was a "crude policy measure", as claimed by Prof Drumm, he would be open to developing a more sophisticated pay-cost management policy in co-operation with the HSE.
However, he said this would require a level of sophistication in managing pay costs that had not been apparent so far from the HSE. "The reality is that the former health boards, and latterly the HSE, appear to have been unable to manage even the existing numbers policy. I have seen no evidence to date of the HSE managing its numbers in the same way that civil service departments, for example, do as a matter of course," he said.
Mr Scanlan said there had been persistent references to the HSE having to hire agency nurses - at a higher cost than staff personnel.
"However, I have seen no evidence of the HSE reviewing its other vacancies, including vacancies among administrative staff, arising from normal turnover and deciding not to fill these in order to permit the hiring of front-line staff such as nurses," he said.
A HSE spokesman said last night that Prof Drumm had made it clear since taking up office that he believed all internal and external practices should be open to discussion and challenge.
