Sir, – Paul Cullen reports (News, June 20th) that the HSE is taking on managers and administrators at a greater rate than it does doctors, nurses and other health professionals. This may be news but it is certainly not new.
Paul Cullen reported ( News, January 3rd, 2022) that the HSE made 25 additional appointments to its most senior management level in the second quarter of 2021. During the same period it recruited five doctors or dentists, the lowest growth in headcount in any staff category.
Those of us who take the trouble to read the HSE’s Health Service Employment Report will not be surprised. You allowed me to point out before (Letters, April 6th, 2021) that in the period between October 2013 and January 2021, the headcount growth in the most senior “executive management” roles was 112 per cent while that for medical and dental specialists was 41 per cent.
The apparently startling fact highlighted by Paul Cullen is not, therefore, an aberration. It is, rather, perfectly consistent with what we have been seeing over the period of 10 years since 2013.
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Should we really be surprised that those at the most senior management levels in our public health service are of the view that the solution to its well-flagged problems is more of their kind rather than more doctors and dentists? Bernard Gloster, the new CEO of the HSE, has plenty on his plate. The freeze he has ordered on the recruitment of managers and administrators suggests that, unlike his predecessor, he realises what the health service really needs. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.