Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will return to the correspondence and move as quickly as we can through the remaining points, although some will require further discussion. The first point relates to a question on the number of people looking for step-down services at a particular date, which is replied to in No.1. No. 2 refers to the budget for home care services, including the percentage increase in money terms and the amount of the increase that is dedicated to meeting commitments in respect of remuneration, that is, salary costs. Details are provided on the home support budget for 2018 and 2019 for each of the regions. I know that all members will be surprised to see that the budget increased because we know that services have not increased. There is quite a bit in that on the Estimates. There is also a note on St. Conlon's nursing home in Nenagh.

There is also a note on the breakdown of the 1,030 staff recruited by the HSE this year. The note explains that the HSE does not include whole-time equivalents, WTEs, or pre-registration nursing and midwifery interns. The correspondence gives a figure for the total health service WTE of 118,888. I was quite clear on the day of our meeting that I wanted to know the total number of WTE staff involved in providing health services. Many of the services are now being provided by agencies, as we all know, particularly home help services. Essentially, agency staff are now doing work that used to be done by the HSE's own staff. There is a clear move towards providing more services through agency staff and fewer through the HSE's own staff. The HSE is not recruiting as many staff as before. In terms of the total HSE budget, whether one refers to voluntary organisations, those that describe themselves as charities, those providing home help services, as well as agency doctors and nurses in hospital, I want to know the total WTE numbers engaged in delivering the health service in Ireland. I include here all staff who are on the direct HSE payroll as well as those working in any of the HSE-funded organisations, including section 38 organisations and the agencies from which services are contracted. I suspect that there are another 20,000 WTEs on top of the figure given. If that is the case, we need to know. We need to know how many people are involved in delivering the health service, but that information is not provided here. We have been given a figure for the HSE's own staff. We will seek that additional information.

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