Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

A considerable amount of work has been done by my Department and the Department of Finance in regard to the proposed redundancy scheme. The intention is that the Minister for Finance and I will take a memo to the Government. This would probably already have been done in the past month if not for the necessary focus on the financial stability of the State and the measures required to be taken to that end. I hope we will be in a position to make progress on the redundancy scheme shortly.

The Deputy is correct that it would make no sense to introduce a voluntary scheme under which significant numbers of staff were lost in one area, leading to staff shortages and a need for fresh recruitment. Redeployment must be a key component of any scheme.

Considerable work has been done in regard to structuring issues in the Health Service Executive by Professor Drumm and his team, hospital management and so on, with the support of external consultants. That is a different issue. One of the issues that arises is whether the management structure needs to be more devolved.

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