POLITICS: Sinn Féin Finance Spokesperson Deputy Pearse Doherty has slammed the latest HSE suspension on hospital recruitment and has called on the new Minister for Health to ensure that the new restrictions will not impact on staffing levels at Letterkenny University Hospital.
Deputy Doherty’s comments come after a recent announced was made by the HSE confirming that a pause on recruitment and additions to hospital payroll is now in force until an agreement may be reached on a new workforce plan for each of the state’s hospital groupings.
Criticising the measures, Deputy Doherty told Donegal Daily, “The recent statement from the HSE announcing that a new recruitment embargo has effectively been introduced within the health service, pending the approval of a new HSE pay and numbers strategy, is nothing short of disgraceful.
“Such has been the backlash from the general public, that the Minister himself has been forced in recent days to take to social media to justify this latest ban on recruitment in what are already many of our dangerously understaffed acute public hospitals.
“The Minister has stated that these interim measures have been put in place while this new plan is being developed and he has been keen to add that the policy won’t prevent hospitals from hiring staff in cases where vacancies should arise and funding is already available within existing hospital pay budgets.
“Despite the Minister’s best efforts to put a positive spin on this, what in effect this move now means is that hospitals have been told that they cannot recruit any more staff unless the hospitals themselves can cough up and find the funding necessary to cover the cost from their already overly stretched budgets.
“The fact is hospitals simply don’t have the resources available to them to make additions to current payroll provisions, so effectively this Government is presiding over yet another recruitment embargo.
“In recent days I have been contacted by medical staff working in Letterkenny University Hospital here in our own county, and they’ve told me that this news has created a lot of anger and uncertainty amongst personnel at the hospital who are already struggling to cope with demand based on the facility’s current level of staffing which many describe as being grossly inadequate.
“This policy must not go unchallenged, and so I intend to raise this ban on recruitment with the new Health Minister in the Dáil at the next available opportunity.
“I’ll be asking him to outline the number of vaccines which currently exist in the hospital, and to give details of all the positions which have already been sanctioned and how these latest recruitment restrictions will impact on the hospital’s ability to hire suitable candidates to fill these positions.
“I’ll also be asking Minister Harris how these measures will impact on the recruitment process of additional positions for which approval has been sought by hospital management but which have yet to be granted by the HSE.
“Our Health service is already on its knees and for any government to even consider introducing an embargo on recruitment, particularly at a time when many of our young nursing and other medical graduates are looking abroad to take up positions, is simply indefensible.”
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