It will cost taxpayers more than €2 million for the State to sever its links with chief executive officers of the former health boards, it has emerged. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent correspondent.
The positions of the 11 chief executives, who were on seven-year contracts, became redundant in January following the establishment of the Health Service Executive (HSE) which now has responsibility for the day-to-day running of the health service.
The chief executives, whose salaries range from about €120,000 to €140,000 a year depending on the size of their regions, were asked to stay on as chief officers of their former health board regions until this month to facilitate a smooth transition from the former health board structures to the HSE.
As their tenure draws to a close, they have now been offered severance packages, which they must accept by next week, which will see them being paid a lump sump equal to twice their annual salaries if they leave the service by July 1st.
This includes a lump sum of 1½ times their annual salary plus an extra six months' salary for agreeing to go by the end of this month.
In addition, each of them will be offered a retraining grant of up to €10,000.
But this grant can only be claimed if receipts are presented showing expenditure has been incurred in retraining, a Department of Health spokesman said yesterday.
The package has been approved by Minister for Health Mary Harney. Her spokesman emphasised the only element of the package above the norm was the extra six months' salary and the option of a retraining grant.
The package is being offered only to health board chief executives who have not taken up top jobs in the new HSE.
Two chief executives have taken up these posts.
They are Pat McLoughlin, former chief executive of the South Eastern Health Board, who is now the director of the HSE's National Hospitals Office, and Seán Hurley, former chief executive of the Southern Health Board, who was appointed director of information and communications technology with the HSE.
However, up to eight of the former health board chief executives are understood to be considering accepting the package.
It is considered a good deal for chief executives who were coming to the end of their careers but some others, particularly those still in their 50s, are likely to want to find other work.
Their experience as chief executives is likely to stand to them in the jobs market.
At least one of them is already understood to have been offered a post at a third-level college.
The former health board chief executives who stayed on as chief officers in their regions over the last six months are due to hand over complete responsibility for their regions to the HSE next week.
Staff in the regions have been informed in recent weeks whom they will report to at a national or local level once their former bosses have departed.
But some say there is still a great deal of confusion about who is in charge.
One senior member of staff in a former health board region said yesterday: "We're making it up as we go along."
The HSE still does not have a permanent chief executive, following the decision last week of a second senior doctor to walk away from the €400,000 a year job.
Prof Brendan Drumm withdrew from the post after the HSE failed to guarantee him he could return to his post as a consultant paediatrician at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin after his five year term as HSE chief executive expired.
The recruitment committee of the HSE meets today to decide what to do next about finding another chief executive.
Until it finds somebody, it says the former AIB Bank executive, Kevin Kelly, will stay on as its interim chief executive.