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LAST UPDATE | 8 Jan 2020
FOR TWO DAYS in a row, there were 760 patients waiting for hospital beds across Ireland and the current crisis is being exacerbated by the recruitment embargo within the HSE, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said.
The union also said that the current system for hiring new staff is causing delays of six months and more in filling new positions.
The number of patients on trolleys in Irish hospitals this week has broken records, with as many as 92 people waiting for a bed at University Hospital Limerick on Monday.
When TheJournal.ie visited the Mater Hospital on Monday, we counted around 10 patients, mostly elderly people, on trolleys solely in the department’s corridors.
One man who has a chronic illness and who was brought in by ambulance had been waiting for a bed on a trolley in the corridor of the ED overnight, for 12 hours.
While flu season is adding to the overcrowding in hospitals, the INMO said that the controls put in place on recruitment are only adding to the problem.
Recruitment ban
The government and HSE have repeatedly insisted that there is no recruitment freeze in the health service.
However, over the past few months, TheJournal.ie has spoken to healthcare workers in a variety of areas – nursing, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, midwifery, administration – who’ve been affected to varying degrees as they were told they been successful in attaining a new job with the HSE but hadn’t yet been able to start them.
It first came to light in April 2019, when Labour’s health spokesperson Alan Kelly shared a letter that had been issued a week before to senior HSE figures.
In that letter, dated 29 March, HSE chief operations officer Liam Woods wrote to senior colleagues to inform them of the recruitment freeze.
He said that recruitment had been suspended for the next three months due to the “financial pressures in the system” from recruitment last year, and the “need to live within the resources provided to the HSE”.
Woods said that it was hoped that this “additional control” will be in effect “for as short a period as necessary”. Those controls were initially put in place until 30 June.
TheJournal.ie reported in July that that deadline came and went, with the freeze persisting and affecting hundreds across the health service.
While the INMO has insisted the freeze is very real and is having a damaging effect, Minister for Health Simon Harris has denied there is a freeze at all.
Last week, he said: “The health service can’t be the only organisation in the world that allegedly has a recruitment embargo and yet continues to hire thousands more staff every year.
What the HSE can’t do and no public service can do is kind of just willy-nilly hire whoever they want. They do have to obviously be responsive to government policies and the funding levels in place because if they don’t do that you would ask me very different questions about why is there an overrun in relation to health spending as well. So the numbers are growing and they’re growing every year.
‘Very, very real’
Speaking as the trolley figures showed record levels this week, an INMO spokesperson told TheJournal.ie it’s “very clear” that the HSE recruitment controls are “very, very real”.
“There are hundreds of vacant posts unfilled and staff waiting to start work,” the spokesperson said. “The new process requires approval at a senior level in the HSE for every single hire – even if it’s simply replacing retiring staff, or those on maternity leave.
We know it’s causing delays of six months and more, starving frontline services of much-needed staff.
The spokesperson cited the example of Cork University Hospital. In September, there were 50 funded and vacant nursing posts awaiting new staff, according to the INMO.
Yesterday, there were 47 patients waiting on a bed at Cork University Hospital.
“The staff were on panels and available, but it took huge pressure from the INMO to get the posts approved. This was only done on 20 December,” the spokesperson added.
It’s not hard to join the dots between delays in staffing and the extreme, record-breaking overcrowding in our hospitals today.
Speaking on Monday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar acknowledged that hospitals were “severely overcrowded” and said the situation had been exacerbated by a “very severe flu season”.
The current flu season, which arrived three to four weeks early this year, had led to the deaths of 22 people as of Friday last; 17 of those were aged 65 years and older.
The Taoiseach said the HSE and hospital management had been assured of government support in taking any additional emergency measures necessary to alleviate the situation.
He said this overcrowding is “not a new problem” and that there is a “long-term plan in place to deal with that long term problem”. Health Minister Harris also promised to open 199 new beds to help deal with the crisis.
The HSE also issued an apology to those affected by the overcrowding as it acknowledged that staff were working hard to cope with the increased demand.
Labour’s Alan Kelly, meanwhile, has said it is time for the government to end the recruitment ban.
“This is the busiest time of year in our hospitals, this situation wasn’t unforeseen but the government and the HSE have refused to heed the very stark warnings,” he said.
The usual excuses on why this crisis is underway won’t wash with the public or with hospital staff. It is time for Minister Harris to come clean on when the recruitment ban will be suspended.
With reporting from Michelle Hennessy, Órla Ryan
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Simon Harris needs to resign. Totally and utterly incompetent in his role. Constantly waffling as the hospitals crisis worsens and worsens.
@Bull McCabe: We need a government who will have the balls to tackle the real issues in the health service. The massive amount of admin staff using out dated processes and communications. I had to get a consultation and the admin staff told me they had to post a letter to to another area, a letter!…..email would have done it instantaneously and guaranteed delivery. The NHS has 2 staff for every patient we have 5……the HSE is riddled with managers also……these two major issues are bleeding the health system dry and it has to change.
@Peter Hughes: they keep
Hiring mire managers , increasing admin and pouring billions more taxpayers money into a broken system, need complete reform leveraging technology to run whole system
Time to confront your now sitting TD’s when they come knocking on your door, not only about the Health service but housing and public services. It’s your duty to demand a service that is fit for purpose. It’s called a duty of care.
No quote from chopper Harris? Must be outside his remit?
@Keith ☘️: Harris is unqualified for this job which is way beyond his capabilities as a college drop out. The only reason he got this job in the first place is from brown nosing Enda Kenny. Has he no shame? He knows it’s beyond his limited capabilities and still hangs on to the trough. Can’t see him survive the next election though. A disaster of a minister.
no recruitment freeze at management grades I suspect
Where does all the money the HSE spend go?
@Paul: salaries and pensions mostly. Salaries increment annually based on a grade and annual increment process, non-performance related increases. The excessive admin and middle management layers added before and during the tiger are there to stay. They have no means of offloading underperforming staff as they are union protected. The union would like them to hire more front line staff while also continuing to pay the non-productive, very costly middle layer admin. HSE costs will spiral exponentially over the coming years. If only the INMO had done something about it when they had the govt over a barrel last year. Then again unions live off strife.
@GrumpyAulFella: Nail on head, we need a government with a set of stones to take on these unions, nothing will change unless there is a massive drive to modernize the whole system…..I won’t hold my breath. The unions would rather see people die on mass then change the cushy setup, they have absolutely no moral compass.
@Peter Hughes: Could either of you cite a source or example for blaming “the unions”? In reality at a time in our country’s history we’ve seen our population grow rapidly by 25%, instead of increasing our bed capacity to keep match we reduced it by about 20% in the same period.
Point fingers all you want but that’s the reality, everyone else has tried to exploit this, including the INMO. During their action last year they claimed they were acting for the benefit of the patients and not financial gain, it was estimated their settlement would cost up to €15m. Yet here we are, patients are worse off than ever and it’s true cost is over €50m.
Part of the reason there is a shortage of front line nursing staff is because many of the most experienced nurses have been taken off the ward and into well paying (under worked) non-clinical middle management positions within the HSE. The INMO of course pushed for this. You’ll notice they rarely direct their ire at the HSE bureaucracy (who are responsible for running the health system). I wonder why?
I’m still waiting for a contract to be released for my post in the HSE so I can move back from the UK. I did my interview last August.
Austerity in all its glory. It hasn’t gone away you know, just like our bond holder debt. The HSE like they government are not fit for purpose.
@Tom Bombdadil: Not really. The HSE are getting €6,000,000,000 more than they were in 2011.
22,800 beds in 2006. 13,800 now. Increased population. If 700 people are looking for accommodation at 100 bedroom hotel, the they all end up in reception.
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