Dáil debates

Tuesday, 5 November 2019

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

 

2:50 pm

Photo of Thomas PringleThomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to talk about the same issue as Deputy McDonald but from a different angle. I hope that I will get a different answer, although that would be a miracle.

In April, the HSE implemented what was, to all intents and purposes, a recruitment embargo, supposedly to run for three months and end in mid-July. This was an attempt by the Government to manage the mismanagement of the national children's hospital project and other HSE overruns over the past year. The irony is that the longer the recruitment freeze goes on, the more costly it will be because people waiting for appointments get sicker and need more expensive and intensive intervention when they are eventually seen. Meanwhile, the HSE is spending millions on agency staff to cover the recruitment freeze, guaranteeing a spending crisis for the Government in the near future. Seven months later and we still have a recruitment freeze, although the Government continues to deny that there is an embargo, referring to it instead as "controls". In a letter to me, the head of HR in the HSE said that the north-west CHO 1 area has not implemented a recruitment embargo or freeze but has introduced "interim controls". This is a freeze by another name and that is what we have. Let us call a spade a spade and call it a recruitment embargo. Furthermore, it is hardly interim if it has been going on for seven months. These measures look set to be a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future.

The consequence of this embargo is that over 100 posts in Donegal for which approval had been given by the national recruitment service are vacant. I am awaiting statistics from the Saolta University Health Care Group, of which the hospitals in Donegal are part, that will likely paint a similar picture. It took the HSE over a month to reply to my query. In its reply, the executive stated that it does not have the figures yet. If it does not respond, that might solve the crisis altogether. At Letterkenny University Hospital, over 19,000 people were awaiting inpatient or outpatient treatment at the end of June, an increase of almost 1,900, or 11%, on the figure for June 2018. Almost 2,000 more are awaiting outpatient appointments.

A total of 1,783 women are waiting to see gynaecologists at Letterkenny University Hospital. The waiting list has been growing for the past five years. The recruitment embargo has prevented management at the hospital from recruiting the nurses, doctors and support staff required to fully reopen its short-stay ward. Elective surgeries and procedures at the hospital are being impacted which, in turn, is adding to the lengthy waiting lists. Figures released today show that 47 people, the third highest number in the country, are waiting on trolleys at the hospital.

CHO 1, which includes Donegal, has fewer mental health posts than was the case ten years ago. The direct consequences of this are manyfold and include longer waiting lists, a worsening trolley crisis and, most concerning of all, worsening conditions for people seeking treatment, which they would not need if the health services had the staff in place to provide those services as required. When will the Government end the recruitment ban and fill the over 100 vacant posts in Donegal in respect of which approval has already been received?

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.