Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Haddington Road agreement has resulted in significant expenditure savings in the public service and the health service but the agreement contained an amount of give and take; it was not all take from the public servants as some things were given back. Among the things given back was that people who had been acting up and working in a post above their official posts were upgraded into those posts and this included more than 800 nurses, just under 30 doctors and 30 senior managers. This provision was part of the agreement and it was applied across the board, it was not some form of special deal which only applied to senior managers.

In reply to Deputy Fleming, I do not have the year-on-year figures for the agreement but I can make them available to the Deputy's office. Deputy Kelleher may be interested in the figures for the difference between September 2007 and October 2014, which are the most up-to-date figures. The number of directors has decreased from 218 to 195; the number of senior managers has decreased from 1,013 to 975; the number of middle managers has decreased from 3,736 to 3,516; and the number of general administrative staff has decreased from 13,253 to 10,268 - that is 3,000 of the famous 5,000 middle managers who are now gone. In that period the number of doctors and midwives has increased but I accept that the number of nurses has decreased and it is an issue I intend to reverse in the coming year. The recruitment embargo is gone, thankfully, but that does not mean we are awash with cash but it means we have more flexibility within our payroll budget and we can move some of the agency staff back into regular posts, in particular, nursing posts. I hope to improve the graduate nursing programme to make it more attractive to nurses to encourage more of them to take up those positions and to stay in the country. If we can agree pay scales with the IMO, we hope to be in a position in the new year to advertise for more than 200 consultant posts. It will make a big difference if we can agree on the salary.

The number of top-ups started with about 200 cases and this number has been reduced to 85 over which there remains an argument. It appears that the people are contractually entitled to those payments. The alternative is to go to law but the HSE must ensure that it does not incur significant costs in legal fees only to lose the case. It would make much more sense not to end up spending a fortune on legal fees if the HSE is contractually obliged to make those payments. That is the current consideration.

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