Budgeting for the HSE onslaught

Budgeting for the HSE onslaught


Liamy MacNally

It simply has to stop. Some people are intimating that if it continues people will be forced to take the law into their own hands. What is being passed off as a health service has to be tackled immediately.
Last week the HSE sought an extra €80 million in cutbacks on top of €1 billion in cutbacks already being examined. Later on in the week they announced that senior managers would benefit from salary increases. Imagine paying people bonuses to implement cutbacks against people who are vulnerable. What kind of a nation state have we become? Do the people at the top in the HSE not know already that the service is a shambles? Increasing salaries is not the solution.
What is needed is a clear-out of the top management, including the Minister. The ‘top table’ needs to go even quicker than the banking top tables. This would certainly go some way to resolving the increasing levels of incompetence and arrogance that are being displayed. 
The dust from the dried-up bones of the Celtic Tiger carcass are blowing everywhere. That burning rawness sticks in most people’s craws. The arrogance of the Celtic Tiger’s money has given way to its skeletal cynicism. Oscar Wilde said that the cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Wilde was unaware of an Ireland consumed by recession so soon after the country consumed everything in sight. Those who wallowed in the golden cage of the Celtic Tiger now realise that rust never sleeps.
The HSE has benefited more than any other organisation in the State from the gains of the Celtic Tiger. Unfortunately the benefits were not for everyone, just the select few who paraded themselves, suited and booted with clip-board authority. 
The response from the Department of Health to the query on increased salaries for top management was laughable.  “… In 2007/2008, the HSE encountered difficulties in attracting high-calibre candidates from the private sector to compete for certain key posts at National Director level. Both the Chairman of the HSE Board and the CEO outlined those difficulties to the Department of Health and the Minister for Health and Children. In response, the Minister for Health and Children received the agreement of the Minister for Finance to some flexibility around the remuneration packages … while a candidate appointed on such a basis would receive a somewhat higher remuneration package for the duration of the contract, the candidate would not have the security of a permanent appointment and would not have access to a public service pension scheme. This type of arrangement is not unique to the health sector. Only one person has been appointed by the HSE on this basis to date.”
Instead of importing so-called professionals why does the HSE not rely on the expertise in its midst? What about the experience of senior nurses? Why not give them the authority and power that they once had? They are at the coalface. They know what makes the HSE tick better than anyone. They know its strengths and its weaknesses. Unfortunately, under the present structure all the weaknesses are becoming blown-up failures. That need not happen.
The problem is that the HSE is tainted with the PD philosophy – the price of everything and the value of nothing. According to media reports, cynicism is evident at the HSE West Forum meetings. This is where councillors from the western seaboard drive to Galway for refreshments and non-answers to pertinent questions about health services in the region. The reason is twofold – they get well paid for it and the Forum has no teeth, which means the HSE management is not obliged by law to jump when councillors seek answers.
It is time the councillors stop subscribing to this nonsense and insist, through Government, that the Forum be made meaningful or else scraps it. What it is at present is worthless and demeaning. It is no good for councillors to continue to growl about its workings. They are the people in positions of power to change what is not working, not the public.
They should insist on change. For councillors to continue the trek to Galway for such banality is only aiding and abetting a cynical exercise.  
A glance through the written answers provided to councillors at the most recent meeting shows that over two years ago a local group in Connemara donated a building to the HSE. Due to financial constraints the HSE cannot staff it but pay €3,000 per annum to air it! Eight jobs are to go in Roscommon and yet managers get more money!  
The budget is due next week, April 7. What will happen to HSE services then? Some people have all the luck. Others wonder how much more they can take.