Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Health his views on the use of agency nurses in hospitals here, in particular the cost-effectiveness of using agency nurses in cases of unexpected demand, specialist nursing and to cover Health Service Executive staff sick leave and holidays [6278/13]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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In the health service, agency staff are used to fill vacancies that arise for a variety of reasons including sick leave, annual leave and maternity leave, to ensure continuity of service and where some flexibility in staffing a service is required. However such arrangements involve certain additional costs, such as a fee to the agency concerned as well as Value-Added Tax (VAT) at 22%. As such, health service management must tightly control the extent to which agency staff are used, particularly to substitute for staff who have left the health service, given the requirement to reduce employment levels to a net 98,955 wholetime equivalents by the end of 2013.

The HSE's National Service Plan 2013 notes that considerable savings have to be achieved from changes to the manner in which staff are deployed, with tight control of the use of higher-cost staffing arrangements and in particular the use of agency staffing and overtime. The Plan includes a target saving of €10m set against the recruitment of graduate nurses to directly offset spend on agency and overtime. It also recognises the need for systematic reviews of rosters and a focused approach to addressing staff absenteeism and implementing revised new sick leave arrangements.