An extra 2,791 staff were taken on to work in the health service in the first nine months of last year, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has confirmed.
Figures it supplied show an extra 1,006 staff were taken on in the first quarter of 2005, an additional 1,205 staff were recruited during the second quarter of the year and an extra 580 staff were given jobs in the third quarter.
The figures indicate there were 100,934 "whole-time equivalents", including staff in voluntary agencies but not including home helps, employed in the health service at the end of June. The term whole-time equivalents refers to the total number of staff employed adjusted on the basis of full-time working.
The HSE personnel census also shows the number employed at the end of September stood at 101,514. "At the end of September 2005 the total number of whole-time equivalent posts returned by the health services personnel census returns was 101,514 made up of HSE (67,554), voluntary sector (10,837) and voluntary hospitals (23,123)," the HSE said in a statement.
But it said no figure was available yet for the number of staff who were employed in the health sector at the end of last year.
The 2,791 extra staff were taken on by the health service in a year when the HSE planned to axe 600 jobs to comply with Government employment ceilings. Last April when the cuts were announced, the HSE said they were being made possible by the amalgamation of 11 health boards. The cuts would apply to administration and backroom functions, it said, adding that the reductions "will not affect frontline services to patients nor will they apply to new posts being created by the HSE in 2005 under the A&E and the intellectual disability development plans".
The HSE said many of the extra jobs in the past year are accounted for by new services. "The total number of new posts in 2005 in respect of newly approved and funded service developments was 2,300," it said.
Last month the secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee he didn't know how it was "that we cannot pin down exactly where the money is going or where people are employed" in the health service.