IMPACT CONFERENCE:THE TRADE union Impact has strongly criticised the management structures of the Health Service Executive (HSE), accusing the organisation of focusing on budgets and bean counting rather than on patients and staff, writes Martin Wall, Industry Correspondentin Kilkenny
Speaking in advance of a campaign of industrial action in the health service over recruitment cutbacks which is to commence next week, Impact national secretary Kevin Callinan said the HSE now stood indicted on its own motto of easy access, public confidence and staff pride.
In a hard-hitting speech at the union's biennial delegate conference which drew a standing ovation, he said ordinary health workers felt increasingly detached from influence over services they provided.
"In many ways managers and staff now face responsibility without power rather than the opposite charge that can sometimes be alleged. But this centralised approach also provides the cover for the ideological drive for privatisation and the deepening inequity in our health services," he said.
Mr Callinan said that since HSE chief Prof Brendan Drumm had taken up his post in August 2005, he had surrounded himself with a team of advisers, and that this had tended to blur structures.
"It has also led to a bunker mentality where it seems that the primary purpose of the advisers is to protect the leader at all costs and to reaffirm rather than challenge. Indeed there are increasing reports that this management style does not welcome challenges and is slow to tolerate questioning or alternative viewpoints," he said.
Mr Callinan said the cutbacks and recruitment restrictions introduced by the HSE from last autumn represented the triumph of centralist corporate control over the provision of services for citizens.
He said that huge gaps in community services meant that access to social work, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, psychology and countless other services was at outrageously poor levels.
"They predicted value for money but we've witnessed mismanagement, arrogance and diktat. Consultant after consultant is hired at a time when it is claimed that some managers are idle. And no sign that the impenetrable bureaucracy is becoming any less so," he said.
The conference passed a series of motions criticising HSE cutbacks and recruitment restrictions.
In the debate, Paul Little of Impact's HSE branch in south Dublin said that in 21 years in the health sector he had never been so disillusioned with the lack of support and the actions of management. He joked that sometimes he felt that he was in a movie called "Drumm and Drummer", or "Forest Grump".
Phil McFadden said that if staff had breached the national agreement Towards 2016, they would not have received pay increases due. He said, however, that when the Labour Court ruled that the HSE had breached the terms of the deal, nothing had happened.