Ms Linda Kelly:

There is no issue from a Fórsa perspective of having a workforce plan that is negotiated and relevant to the service. Every modern organisation should have a workforce plan. There is no issue with that but what we have in the HSE at the moment is that the spend on agency staff is to fill core service provision. It is not for short-term vacancies or situations that cannot be anticipated, which is what agency was always intended for in its original sense. It was for emergencies. It is for staffing, as we hear from managers, and because the HSE is not sharing this information, we can only go by the feedback we get from members across the country. That is that where they cannot recruit an occupational therapist in a hospital, for example, they have to go to the for-profit recruitment firm to ask for an occupational therapist, who will be in the hospital for a year, two years, or maybe longer, providing core services in a non-emergency situation. That is a policy choice which is about reallocating budgets across different lines to make it look like you are not spending as much on staffing as you need to. We need to get to the bottom of that. Everybody wants value for money from the health budget. It is a huge spend for the Government. We are all citizens. We all need health services and contribute to them through our tax. The idea that we are reallocating things to try to hide the true need of the staff cost does not benefit anybody.