Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy makes an important point. Last week at this committee we had a detailed discussion on the increased numbers of people working for the health service. A number of Deputies and Senators raised the issue of the growth in administration and management. The national director of HR has committed to giving a report to the committee showing a more detailed breakdown. From my initial inquiries, I would make the point that we need to be careful in presuming that everyone in the admin-management section is not carrying out an important role in terms of the delivery of clinical programme. For example, a clinical nurse manager on a ward is an important piece of our health service infrastructure that is recognised by our trade union movements and nurse representative organisations as a crucial piece relating to patient safety and the operation of wards. The role may well end up being classified as administration or admin-management, but a patient going through a hospital today will see a benefit from having that person on the ground. In addition, the delivery of a number of other clinical programmes will require other people in that category.

I could not agree more with the Deputy in terms of his question regarding our desire to increase the number of people working on the front line of the health service. I am conscious, as we speak at this committee meeting this morning, that the INMO is about to engage with my Department, the HSE and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform at the Workplace Relations Commission. I hope it is a fruitful and constructive engagement because it is essential in the interests of all of our patients. We had detailed and productive discussions with the INMO on a range of issues over the past couple of months on recruitment and retention. It is fair to say that we made progress on quite a number of them, including having for the first time in a number of years a fully funded workforce plan for nursing at a much earlier time of the cycle. It is also fair to say, not that I speak for the INMO, that there are some areas where we did not make as much progress. This relates to how some of the retention measures interact with the process that is going on in terms of the Public Sector Pay Commission and the Lansdowne Road successor talks that will follow. I hope the Workplace Relations Commission can help make progress in that regard today and over the weekend. It is not in any of our interests to see industrial unrest in the health service from next week on. We have already made progress in alleviating two other potential industrial relations disputes in the health sector.

If we were here just over a week ago, we would have been talking about threatened industrial action from the IMO with regard to non-consultant hospital doctors. That has now been satisfactorily resolved. We would also have been talking about action from next Tuesday by SIPTU health care support staff. I am very pleased that a way forward was found with SIPTU in that regard. I thank it for its constructive engagement. We had three disputes about ten days ago. Two have been resolved or put into a process towards resolution and one remains outstanding, but work is ongoing there. As the Deputy knows, we intend to hire 1,000 additional nurses this year. I accept the INMO's point of view that we lost an awful lot of nurses. Numbers have been growing, but I say that while accepting that there is still a way for them to grow to get back to the levels they were at before the crash. I do not disagree with the Deputy's assessment.