Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 October 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 - Health
Health Service Executive - Financial Statements 2021 (Resumed)

9:30 am

Mr. Robert Morton:

We have worked very closely with our trade union partners on a number of the issues we feel are affecting retention. One of those is where we allocate new staff and new students. We have changed our policy this year, which has actually helped our recruitment strategy, to allocate all new staff to a base within 45 km, at a maximum, of where they live. For existing staff, we are currently implementing a new staff transfer policy to give people the opportunity to move to a base within 45 km of where they live. We think that will support retention because it has been a big issue that our trade union partners have consistently brought to our attention.