Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Kelly. We had this discussion when others came in, around the 2,500 extra staff. Bernard Gloster led us off and he talked about deserving posts. When we had the HSE and the Department in, I asked about this. There was an impression out there first of all that we were hiring willy-nilly, that they were not really important posts. Bernard Gloster talked about deserving posts. What are undeserving posts? Is it a cleaner? Do we not need cleaners, secretarial staff and administrative staff? Is there a post that is undeserving, if an organisation is hiring staff and needs them? We had the consultants in and they said they did not have the back-up team or administrative staff around them. They said that if they do not have a secretary, they cannot do their job. They were expressing their frustration.

Everyone thinks in terms of front-line workers, that those are the deserving posts. If you do not have the back-up, the people sending out a letter to patients about their appointments, the system does not work. It is extraordinary that there is this impression out there that there are undeserving people, priorities and so on. The system does not seem to be able to prioritise those posts.

The witnesses talked about mental health. There was a case in my area at the weekend of a young man who tried to commit suicide by throwing himself off a block of flats. He made three attempts and the last one was fatal. I do not know the ins and outs of it. It could be that he should have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act when he was brought to the hospital. The Garda probably had a role. It does not matter. The man is dead. The system failed him and his family. Also in my area there is a mother rearing children, three of whom are on the autism spectrum. One of the children is non-verbal. She is trying to get speech and language therapy. She was told first that he was on a list. Then she was told there was no list because there were no speech and language therapists at the time. The first thing was to get an assessment. She was waiting a year for that. Then there was the assessment and she thought the supports would be put in place. There was nothing. She ended up having to go to the courts to get some sort of supports. That was the first child. She has a another two who are on the spectrum. How do people cope with these things? They are just examples of the everyday challenges people have in their lives.

We have an economy of about €25 billion yet there is no support in the system for a child who cannot talk, or they are waiting years to get it. That is where people find something wrong. We can make throwaway remarks about hiring too many people or whatever but there can be false economy. We are hearing today that the State can pay for agency staff, who are paid more and have flexible hours, but it cannot hire staff. It just does not make sense to those who may be listening in and do not know the ins and outs of it. We have people going around with clipboards and all the rest of it and they think it is probably a waste of time and ask what people are doing in the hospital. If you drill down, in a lot of cases, they are not undeserving posts or undeserving staff. That message needs to be send out loud and clear. This committee can have a role. We can certainly try to find out if the posts are being eliminated.

In the past couple of minutes we have, I am interested in hearing the effect on morale. There are a couple of thousand children waiting for assessments in CHO 7, 33% up on last year. Those are assessments. It is hard to hire someone if they know that there will be thousands of cases on their desk. We talk to people about the difficulty in hiring for posts. That is one difficulty, because there is a huge backlog of cases. No matter how enthusiastic someone is when they come into the job, it will affect them to hear that there are thousands of cases to be dealt with. There is also the pressure of dealing with families who have children who are non-verbal or who are at their wits' end due to all the pressures involved. What is the effect on staff morale? How does impact directly? I presume it is people out sick. I ask the witnesses to explain it to us please.