Only agencies operating within their budgets will be permitted to recruit, writes Martin Walland Steven Carroll.
THE HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE (HSE) is to ease its controversial recruitment restrictions in certain circumstances, The Irish Times has learned.
Senior HSE sources said the organisation had recently received a new higher employment ceiling, which would see higher figures working their way down to individual hospitals and local health offices.
The announcement comes as 28,000 healthcare staff are preparing to take industrial action from tomorrow in protest at the recruitment freeze.
The trade union Impact said industrial action by its members had been provoked by the recruitment restrictions and the effect they have had on health services and staff.
The union, which represents health professionals, therapists, social care workers, as well as administrative and managerial staff, will meet this morning to brief the media on what the implications of the industrial action will be.
Some 85 per cent of members have voted to support the action, in the largest vote of its kind undertaken by the union.
The senior HSE sources said agencies that were considered to be understaffed and operating within their budgets would be again permitted to recruit additional staff in priority areas.
However, the recruitment restrictions will remain in place at hospitals and in community health services which are operating over their budgets.
The restrictions were put in place last autumn in an attempt to enable the HSE to operate within its budget. The organisation was forced to make cutbacks that were attributed to a shortfall of almost €350 million in funding.
Impact said the ban on new staff was hitting existing services and delaying promised improvements in areas such as primary care, disability services, mental health services and elderly care.
"The industrial action will see staff in the HSE and HSE-funded agencies refuse to co-operate with HSE advisers or the HSE 'transformation programme'," an Impact spokesman said.
"They will also block non-emergency overtime and out-of-hours work and refuse to cover work and posts affected by the recruitment freeze," he added.
The union accused the HSE of undermining a wide range of working conditions including cover for absences, promotions, career break returns, and access to term-time and other schemes.
Impact has also warned of possible other forms of action, including work stoppages "in particular services in certain parts of the country".
The Irish Times revealed last week that there were almost 2,700 fewer people on the HSE payroll than there were last September when the employment restrictions were first introduced.
A financial report recently given to the HSE board said overall numbers employed in the health service had now fallen for seven months in a row, and stood at 110,297 at the end of March. At the end of last August, there were almost 113,000 whole-time equivalent posts in the HSE.
The report said that while some of the job reductions in the service were due to seasonal factors and the ending of some student nurse placements, "the majority" would have resulted from the recruitment pause put in place last September and the tight employment control process in place from early this year.