Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The appropriate action is to establish an organisation on a statutory basis, which happened in January 2005, and charge the management and board of that organisation with making decisions on appropriate staffing levels. I repeat that nothing on this scale has ever been embarked on in the public or private sector in Ireland by way of reorganisation and transformation. We are in active discussion. I have had no report on appropriate staffing levels.

Deputy Reilly asked me how many reports I need. The HSE commissioned two reports, one by McKinsey examining the management structure and one examining the clerical and administrative areas. The first report is to hand. The second is being completed with the board of the HSE. I am in discussions with the chairman of the HSE, whom I will meet later with Professor Drumm, around some of these issues to ensure we have the appropriate management structure down the line. At that point we will be able to decide where we need to redeploy people. There are major disparities. That is a hangover from the former health boards.

Many of these famous grade eights were in acting positions under the former health boards. Many are nurses and other professionals who became managers through industrial relations agreements, for example. It is not correct of Deputy Reilly to suggest that a plethora of new people have come in as managers. That is not correct. Many of them have resulted from industrial relations agreements.

The Deputy asked recently at the Committee on Health and Children how many additional ones we had approved in the past year. I understand the answer is one and that the remainder were replacements for those who were moving on, retiring or otherwise. We have approved one additional post in the area of child care. There has been full scrutiny of all these positions in the Department of Health and Children for the past 12 months.

See this speech in context