HSE MANAGERS SPENT more than €100,000 on a ten-day trip to recruit junior doctors in India and Pakistan earlier this year.
The recruitment team of 36 people – including consultants, managers and admin staff – paid out €113,768 during the visit in May this year, including €37,866 on flights alone, James Fogarty reports in the Medical Independent. Another €21,008 was spent on meeting rooms and business centres, while the bill for accommodation and transfers came to €44,913.
The HSE said that it paid economy rates for the flights, and that security concerns – including the killing of Osama bin Laden, which occurred during the trip – made it more expensive.
The trip came amid a last-minute scramble to recruit junior doctors, as it emerged more than a hundred posts in Irish hospitals would be unfilled when medics started their new training posts in July.
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