A FURTHER voluntary redundancy scheme for Health Service Executive staff may be in place by the autumn, Minister for Health James Reilly has said.
He stressed that the next redundancy scheme would be much more focused than the one which operated late last year to ensure essential staff do not leave.
The Minister said he did not want to see a scenario again where the chief executives of hospitals were taking early redundancy.
“On this occasion I want it to be very focused,” he said.
“I want it focused on the areas where staff are no longer essential and focused to protect frontline services.
Some 2,006 personnel left the HSE under the voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes which were announced at the beginning of November last and closed at the end of December.
These were made available to support personnel in addition to managerial, administrative and clerical staff. The previous government had initially forecast that up to 5,000 HSE employees could leave under the schemes.
The total payments made to staff leaving under the schemes was €101 million.
Prior to the general election Fine Gael promised to reduce staffing levels in the HSE by 8,000 over four years, a quarter of them through a voluntary redundancy scheme and the remainder through natural wastage.
Labour promised to reduce HSE staffing levels by 7,000.
Asked how soon these staff would be shed, Dr Reilly said: “That’s a bit difficult to say at this moment in time . . . but certainly I would hope by the autumn that we would have something in place that could form the basis for an extension” to the recent HSE redundancy scheme.
Meanwhile Dr Reilly said the moratorium on recruitment in the health service would not be lifted but a more flexible approach would be adopted in some instances, especially when it comes to the replacement of frontline staff.
Meanwhile, the farm advisory agency Teagasc is seeking approval to offer the same redundancy terms to staff as were available to those in the health service as part of its plans to let go 100 personnel.
It was learned in January that Teagasc had put a request to the government for a voluntary early-retirement scheme for 100 non-frontline staff.
It proposed that this would cost €6.4 million, and would be funded by the central exchequer.
The agency has applied to use the same redundancy terms as agreed for staff leaving the HSE before Christmas.
Teagasc has not yet heard back from the Department of Finance on its proposals for the redundancy deal.
Teagasc is facing the rationalisation of its services under the plan for the implementation of the Croke Park Agreement in the State agency sector which was drawn up several weeks ago.