Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 347: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if she will make a statement on recent comments by the chief executive of the Irish Medical Organisation that the health services here will take many years to recover lost ground as a result of short-sighted cutbacks imposed by the Health Service Executive in the latter half of 2007. [11772/08]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The Health Service Executive (HSE) as part of its financial monitoring and control process introduced a number of measures in September 2007. These measures included: all recruitment be suspended for September after which the situation would be reviewed; all foreign travel was cancelled for the remainder of the year; all Hotel bookings for meetings etc. were cancelled for the remainder of the year; all 'non frontline' expenditure be critically reviewed. The intention was that these measures would not impact on 'front line' services which were to be maintained in line with the National Service Plan. In fact at that time the HSE had exceeded its targets in certain services and had treated substantially more people than in the same period of the previous year.

The recruitment pause put in place in September 2007 included a derogation process to deal with the filling of essential posts to protect front-line services and close to 900 posts were approved under this process. This temporary pause in recruitment ended on 31st December 2007 and any posts falling vacant from 1st January 2008 can be filled subject to the provisions of a detailed employment control circular issued by the HSE on January 8th.

The HSE are continuing to ensure that patient care is not compromised and that they maintain the high level of service being provided.