HSE freezes recruitment of junior doctors and other support staff due to shortfall in budget funding

A freeze on the recruitment of junior doctors, healthcare assistants, home helps and other grades in the health service has been put in place by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

No new staff will be recruited next year except where prior commitments have been made and plans for the addition of another 7,000 staff have been abandoned.

The current ban on recruiting administrative and management staff is being extended across the health service until the end of the year, according to a memo from HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster, seen by The Irish Times.

All external or net growth recruitment is being paused, with some exceptions, Mr Gloster told staff on Friday. “This reflects the recruitment and net growth year to date and is necessary to limit the impact of those staff categories with growth potential remaining.”

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Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly announced on Wednesday, in the aftermath of Budget 2024, that the recruitment freeze in the HSE was being widened due to the financial constraints in the health service.

Mr Donnelly has told fellow ministers that his department received only one-third of what it needed in the Budget to run existing services and provide for new measures.

According to the HSE memo, there will be an immediate cessation of additional agency staffing, and the recruitment of general staff is also being frozen.

Consultants, GP trainees, nurses, midwives, dentists, orthodontists, health and social care professionals, and key ambulance staff are exempted from the freeze.

In the memo, Mr Gloster says the HSE has added 23,000 staff since the end of 2019, and has reached and even exceeded many recruitment targets for this year.

“The HSE also needs to ensure it has an increasingly adequate control environment as it faces a period where its funded level, which while quite high, is not adequate for all current costs.”

Last year, even before this week’s Budget, the HSE warned its funding was over €2 billion shy of requirements, a view now shared by Mr Donnelly.

One-third of the shortfall is subject to “control”, Mr Gloster says, while two-thirds relates to inflation and “unprecedented demand” from patients.

The grades now covered by the recruitment freeze are:

• Management and administration
• Patient and client care (attendants/healthcare assistants/home help)
• Non-consultant hospital doctors, except where a contractual obligation already exists or the NCHD in an approved postgraduate training programme.
• General support

The recruitment pause will be reviewed at the end of the year, but Mr Gloster says there will be no further growth in workforce in 2024, other than about 2,000 posts where pre-existing commitments have been made.

“This means also that previous approved posts in principle which cannot at this time be funded (circa 7000) will be removed from the profile and if considered in the future will have to be new approved developments,” he said.