Relocation costs: Nearly €800,000 has been paid out by the Midland Health Board in relocation expenses to about 120 staff who moved a few hundred yards from one psychiatric unit to another.
The payments, which averaged €6,000 gross each, were made to staff moving from the run-down St Fintan's psychiatric hospital in Portlaoise to a newly built acute psychiatric unit at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise.
The units are both on the Dublin Road in Portlaoise.
The payments have been condemned as a waste of scarce healthcare resources.
Fine Gael's health spokesman, Mr Liam Twomey, said it was fair enough for employees to be paid such expenses when they moved a significant distance because they would incur extra costs and have their lives disrupted but if they moved within an average sized town and still got paid to do so it was "disingenuous".
"I think it makes both employers and employees look in a bad light when that sort of information goes public," he said.
"I thought some of these things were part of benchmarking," he added.
A source close to the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise said it was hard to believe nearly €1 million had been paid in compensation to staff for effectively improving their working conditions.
"Imagine how many people on waiting lists could be treated with this money," according to the source.
The health board, in a statement, said the compensation package agreed with staff unions was based on a formula for such transfers agreed in the early 1990s when staff working in the psychiatric services in Castlerea had to move to Roscommon.
Under that agreement, according to Mr Des Kavanagh, general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, any member of staff who had to travel to their new place of work either in the community or to a new acute inpatient unit would get travelling expenses from their home to the new destination for a period of two years.
As a result, a small number of staff were getting huge expenses and the formula was varied when a number of hospitals in Dublin merged to form Tallaght Hospital in 1998.
It was agreed between health service employers and the unions at that stage that all staff who had to move would get paid a small standardised payment, rather than a few getting large pay-outs, he said.
"And that is what happened here.
"Everybody who moved to the acute unit in Portlaoise will get paid a standard payment," he said.
He agreed it may appear "unusual" to the public that staff in Portlaoise would be paid money to move up the road, but it was all part of an agreement reached to cover all similar situations whether staff moved short or long distances, he insisted.
Not all staff in St Fintan's have moved yet however. Some 30 patients remain in the hospital and it is understood the staff who stayed on to care for these patients also got paid the relocation expenses on the grounds that they could on occasion be required to work shifts in the new unit up the road.
Mr Kavanagh emphasised these staff would not get paid further relocation expenses if and when they moved out of St Fintan's permanently.
He also said the standardised payment was not just in recognition of relocation.
"Nothing is just paid on the basis of geographical change. It's also paid in recognition of workers co-operating with change, adapting to new procedures and the employers' modernisation agenda," he said.
The health board said the purpose of the agreement reached with the unions was "to bring about an orderly and seamless transfer of services" from one unit to another.