UNIONS and Health Service Executive West management have agreed to begin consultations at local level early next week to explore “all options” in tackling a potential €91 million deficit.
In a joint statement last night the parties said they had agreed a framework to allow for local negotiations across the region stretching from Limerick to Donegal with a deadline of August 31st.
The statement, issued after day-long discussions chaired by the Labour Relations Commission in Galway, said it was “agreed that all options to reduce expenditure would be further jointly explored”.
These options would include “non-pay savings, reduced hours, career breaks, unpaid leave, flexibility in the re-allocation of staff, and phasing out expenditure on agency staff where possible”.
The statement said “every effort is being made to minimise the impact on services and employment”, with participants agreeing that discussions had been “positive”.
Over 30 health union representatives and HSE management attended the resumed LRC discussions in Merlin Park Hospital yesterday, with union representatives warning that they believed a proposed figure of 300 job losses was masking a much larger figure of up to 1,000 posts, as identified in the recent Mott and McDonald consultancy study commissioned by HSE.
“We believe there is a subtle attempt to make some jobs unviable by several reducing hours,” Siptu health services division official Paul Bell said, before the talks began.
“Cutting mental health, psychological and home help services is also a U-turn on Government and HSE policy, which advocates that there should be more care within the community,” he added.
Impact also warned it would not tolerate any unilateral action. Local official Pádraig Mulligan said last night his union still intended to hold “hands-off-our-hospital” protests today and on Tuesday outside two hospitals it believed to be under threat – Roscommon and Portiuncula hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway.
It is understood the talks yesterday were examining whether the number of jobs to be lost could be reduced by introducing short-time working arrangements for personnel in hospital and healthcare services in the region.
HSE management had also proposed propose reducing expenditure on overtime and allowances by converting 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week hospital beds to day-beds or five-day beds.
As the discussions continued last night, there was heated political reaction, with Minister for Social Protection and Galway West TD Éamon Ó Cuív saying there was a perception among HSE West management that the HSE head office was not dealing with the western region on an “equitable basis”.
“I think all regions should be dealt with equitably, and according to senior [HSE] management in the west this isn’t happening,” Mr Ó Cuív said.
Labour Party president and Galway West TD Michael D Higgins also said it would appear the HSE was trying to achieve cuts of five years in a single year.
“Even over five years what is being suggested in a bookkeeping exercise was not, and is not, in the interest of health care provision,” he said.