Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Some 70% of the hospital's costs are staff related. The employment of temporary and agency workers cannot continue on an ongoing basis. No permanent positions are being cut or anything like that. The hospital must be managed within its allocation. Otherwise, as the Deputy knows, under the law introduced under the Administration of which he was a member and with which I agree and supported at the time, the overrun will become a first charge on the allocation for the following year, which places even greater pressure on the hospital's ability to maintain the agreed level of service. We all agreed on this approach in the interests of trying to provide a means by which we have some sense of budgetary and management discipline in delivery of the health service.

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