Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 122: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the extent to which staffing at all levels throughout the Health Service Executive is sufficient, adequate or otherwise to meet current and future requirements; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26160/10]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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The Government has made clear that a critical part of its strategy to restore the public finances is to achieve sustainability in the cost of delivering public services relative to State revenues. To help achieve this goal, it will be necessary to restructure and reorganise the public service and to reduce public service numbers over the coming years. This requires that the moratorium on recruitment and promotion in the health service will continue to apply until the numbers have fallen to the level set out in the Employment Control Framework for the health sector.

The Framework for 2010-2012 gives effect to the Government decision on employment policy in the public sector and provides that there will be a net reduction in employment of 6,000 from March 2009 to the end 2012 and consequential pay roll savings. Based on numbers reductions already achieved in 2009, the net target reduction to end 2012 is 4,560 WTE. Therefore, the net target reduction in numbers in 2010, and in the following two years, is 1,520 whole-time equivalents.

The Government decision has been modulated to ensure that key services are maintained insofar as possible in the health services, particularly in respect of children at risk, older people, persons with a disability and cancer services. Therefore, the Framework provides for a number of grades and posts that are exempt from the moratorium on recruitment and promotion. In addition, the HSE also has the capacity under the Framework to fill some exceptions from the general moratorium provided it achieves the overall target reductions. This provides some degree of flexibility to protect key services once the overall target reduction is being met.

In order to minimise the impact on essential service delivery, the reorganisation and restructuring of work is required. The redeployment and reassignment of staff, optimal skill mix and scheduling of services will be an essential part of this process. The Public Sector Agreement reached between public sector unions and management will play an important role in this. The agreement provides for greater flexibility, an extended working day and redeployment of health sector staff. Ultimately, this will have a positive impact on the provision of health services and will allow the transformation agenda to continue.