Ms Linda Kelly:

I am going to move onto the importance of protecting public health services. At a meeting of this committee in September, Mr. Robert Watt stated: "it is clear that it is not sustainable long term to continue to increase the health budget in line with demand every year.” This narrative must be refuted in the strongest possible terms. We know that the population of our country is growing and the over-65 cohort, who need the most services from health, is growing exponentially. We should have a legitimate expectation that staffing to provide those services would increase with relativity. This pervasive narrative, coupled with the veiled insinuation that public healthcare workers are simply not being productive enough must be called out for what it is, a cheap neoliberal trick to provide cover for the privatisation of the public healthcare system by stealth.

The €79.493 million spent on private, for-profit consultancy firms for strategic planning and business improvement in 2023 would fund 1,865 entry-level therapy posts across the country, 2,354 medical secretary posts or over 1,300 psychology posts. That is the scale of the spend. Imagine what difference that level of staffing would make to people when accessing services. Just last week we learned from a Sunday Independent report rather than from the HSE that half of the people involved in the productivity and savings task force are from these for-profit private consultancy firms. One would have to wonder whose interests are being served. There can be no better return on investment for the HSE than investing in its staff. It is incredibly disappointing to Fórsa members that the CEO of the organisation fails to recognise that and instead focuses on policy choices that are short term and short-sighted.

Regarding the current industrial relations situation, the HSE has completely failed its staff in the handling of this dispute. When the HSE presented its service plan earlier this year, Fórsa, along with our sister unions, requested engagement on the pay and numbers strategy before it was finalised.

This request was made again in March 2024 and both requests were ignored by the employer. The HSE claims to have fulfilled its obligations as a public sector employer by making a short presentation online via Teams to the health sector panel of trade unions in July, but this was nothing more than a fait accompliand a tick-the-box exercise. It has blatantly refused to listen to the voices of its own staff, choosing instead to work with outside agencies to craft a plan without any internal input. It is quite simply a recipe for disaster.

One can only conclude on the behaviour to date that Bernard Gloster has no intention of resolving this dispute and is prepared to gamble the health service during the winter months rather than engage with staff on an issue of fundamental dispute. In concluding, I wish to set out that Fórsa is looking for the committee’s support in calling for a negotiation on the pay and numbers strategy that would result in a workforce plan that sets out safe staffing levels for all categories of staff relative to population growth and service demand. Our thanks to the committee for its consideration of this issue.