The interim chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Kevin Kelly, has confirmed that it will have to make savings of around €200 million over the next nine months to live within the funding allocation provided by the Government.
Mr Kelly told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee yesterday that with the unification of 11 health boards into one executive there was potential for "significant savings". However, he maintained that there would be no involuntary redundancies and that front-line services would not be affected.
Mr Kelly confirmed that the HSE had been asked to reduce staff numbers by 600 this year and that its State allocation was €200 million less than it believed was necessary to deliver services this year.
However, he said that he had insisted that frontline services for patients would not be affected by either the job losses or the measures taken to generate the €200 million in savings. "We are in discussions on how each of the former health boards will contribute to this €200 million," he said.
The director of human resources at the HSE, John Magnier, told the committee the official ceiling for health service numbers was 97,255. He said there were over 98,700 actually employed and there were a further 1,500 agency staff.
