Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE HSE SPENT approximately €800,501 every day last year on agency nurses and locum doctors.
New figures released to Sinn Féin Health spokesperson Louise O’Reilly show the health service spent €105 million on agency doctors – around €287,739 every single day.
Letterkenny University Hospital spent over €9 million on agency doctors last year, while the Midlands Regional Hospital Portlaoise spent €8 million.
Last year Connolly Memorial Hospital spent €2 million on agency nurses, Cork University Hospital spent nearly €3 million, while Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda spent €2.3 million.
Raising the issue during Leaders’ Questions today, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the spend on agency staff in hospitals has doubled since 2011, when the spend on agency doctors was €54 million.
Calling the spend “ridiculous and excessive”, McDonald said the government is squandering public money by not addressing the issue of medical staff retention in hospitals.
She said the over-reliance on agency staff is a direct result of the recruitment and retention crisis and called on the Taoiseach to do more in terms of salary equalisation and keeping medical school graduates in the country.
McDonald said it is the case that Ireland is educating the “brightest” students only to let them emigrate.
“It is the case the HSE is overrunning on its budget once again,” admitted the Taoiseach. However, he said that has been the case for the last number of years.
There are “much deeper problems” in the health service, said Varadkar, who added that major structural reforms are needed to solve the challenges the Irish health service faces.
However, he argued that just 2% of the HSE budget goes towards agency staff, adding that over half of the HSE budget is for payroll.
He said it is not unusual in an organisation or company for one in 25 employees to be agency workers.
McDonald said spending such a colossal amount of money on locum staff is “not good value for money”.
The Taoiseach said there are now 10,000 doctors working for the public service and 1,000 more nurses employed than this time last year.
He said it is untrue to state that nurse employment is falling, adding that it “is at an all-time high”.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
If you dont value your medical and nursing staff and refuse to pay them properly then this is what you get. And before the anti public service crowd jump on me for stating the obvious, think about, why would they leave if they are not better paid and treated professionally else where? Nurses and doctors are saying this for over 15 years now and yet nothing changes.
@mary conneely: Thank you!
@mary conneely: you are dead right but it is worth pointing out a lot of the agency staff also work in the public service. Some have reduced work weeks and work for agencies the rest of the time.
The reality is while the numbers seem high from an accounting point of view full time permanent staff are more expensive than agency staff.
@Kal Ipers: I used to work for one as a student. We were paid 14 an hour by the HSE and the agency took 4 of that.
@Kal Ipers: I would love to see proof that it’s cheaper. The longer term. Anything I’ve come across shows that within 5 to 10 years the costs on agency staff are higher than directly hiring a full time employee. The agency pockets the additional cash, it’s not “saved” anywhere.
Reports from the UK demonstrate the same. On paper initially it looks like they’re saving money, but when the staff shortages etc kick, agencies begin to cost even more than the full-time employee.
It’s a Neo-liberal myth that’s it’s cheaper. In the long term it’s not.
@Kal Ipers: Not sure I agree.The bulk of agency costs is likely spent on locum doctors as opposed to agency nurses.Nurses typically work a certain number of hours per week,and their governing body seems to be quite strict about enforcing this(from the outside looking in).Despite being full time workers, they might seek locum work to pay the bills However locum doctors tend to locum full time and not in addition to full time jobs.They are filling gaps – covering for doctors who are on annual leave,sick leave,maternity leave – or simply where not enough doctors were employed in the first place.Because another doctor is getting paid for their aforementioned leave,the HSE now has to foot two bills for the same job,whereas employing more doctors at normal rates would be more cost effective.
@mary conneely: ok, so that justifies nurses taking fake sick days and doing agency work in other hospitals on those days… yeah it happens
@drsarehumanstoo: same rational for increasing nursing recruitment .
@iohanx: Not sure that thats the status quo now to be fair. Nurses have to operate on a fairly high degree of good will if they remain working in Ireland in the first place, so they’re an unlikely bunch to paint as absconders.
@iohanx: There’s always one, but this is very unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. 1.) To my knowledge nurses are allowed 7 uncertified sick days – over 4 years. Given the nature of where they work it’s advisable to be prudent with these.
2.) Nurses, just like everyone else, tend to talk among themselves, whether on social media or when they socialise. Anyone dumb enough to do this would quickly get caught, ostracised by their colleagues for leaving them in the smelly stuff, and no doubt management would want a word too.
@Boyne Sharky: riddle me this? Ireland doesnt have enough nurses were told. Yet we can fill the gaps with other actual nurses not working in the public service
What a surprise – report issued stating that the health service is over budget, and the media are pinning it on agency doctors – the ones with no job security who come save the skin of incredibly understaffed medical/ surgical teams when God forbid, one member of that team is absent.
My niece has just graduated with an honours degree, during internship year she was paid minimum wage, now she gets a few euro more, still less than the day care assistants she works alongside, what a disgrace, HSE will employ nurses from outside the county and pay them well yet they won’t look after our own…
That’s why I lost my daughter to Australia absolute joke
@Martin O Donnell: This, like the problems with the HSE, didn’t just happen by themselves in isolation, some were allowed to occur and others were compounded.
Public Service pay and numbers was slashed at a time when it was convenient to blame them for just about everything, the problem was it was smoke and mirrors to fool the public. Those who worked in the Health Service warned what would happen, the longer waiting lists, the patients on trolleys, and what did their detractors do? You rubbished these claims and cheered at the very cutbacks you’re now seeing the results of.
Almost as soon as the cutbacks were announced way back then the agencies began to bring their staff into the hospitals, for a price of course. The numbers of staff may have been cut back officially but for the hospitals to function they needed a minimum amount of staff, and here’s where the problems began. Our population increased at a time when, due to cutbacks, our Health Service decreased, less beds, less staff, hospital closures and downgrading. However due to the cost of having to pay for increasing numbers of agency staff, hospital budgets, and the HSE budget, skyrocketed. And nobody questioned this.
Nobody thought why this false economy was allowed to continue, why it looked good on paper that staff numbers had been reduced, when in reality they’d never been higher. The problem is it was, and continues to be, the agencies who benefited from this arrangement, they profited, the hospitals got a bad deal from it. They’re paying over the going rate for staff who could be on one ward today, another tomorrow, perhaps even a different hospital the next day, neither they nor the patients or their colleagues have any consistency.
Simply cutting out the agencies and employing more staff directly, and yes paying them a reasonable wage would benefit everyone. It’s pointless, and insulting, negotiating with these staff over few euro per week of a raise or 2% over 3 or 4 years when they see consultants get a €72k raise.
Why would any young person with a degree and options stay here for that when there are countries out there willing to pay handsomely for their qualifications and experience. And while many of our best and brightest are leaving, almost every hospital is sending managers scouring Third World countries, this is more expense. And we can’t even be certain of the qualifications of those they retain, remember the HSE wouldn’t allow American nurses with masters degrees and PhD’s work here but the Asian equivalent of an Irish degree seems to be fine. It’s no coincidence that some of the hospitals mentioned, like Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda has a huge new extension – and only one floor of it open because they can’t get the staff for the other floors. Like many other hospitals this one has chronic problems retaining staff.
I won’t be the first to point out the massive typo in the headline, Nooooooo sir.
Pay nurses and Dr’s properly and they won’t all want to leave the country
2% of the budget on agency is ridiculous when 1% could likely pay full time staff in those medical/nursing posts but you wont get ppl back to work here when the pay isnt equal among colleagues. Same as teachers we need equal pay for equal work
@Jeanniejampots: it would come close to funding full time staff as they need to put money aside for redundancies and factor in the overall rights of the staff. It is cheaper in the long term from an accountancy point of view to use agency staff.
@Kal Ipers: Neo-liberal myth is that’s it’s more expensive to take on long term staff.
Any agency healthcare assistant is paid about €15 per hour. The agency bills €45-60 per hour to the HSE.
A directly hired full time HCA on €18 per hour costs the HSE €40 per hour.which includes pension sick pay etc..
So where’s the saving? Do tell?
I’ll wait.
@Good Early: Never new HCAs got €18 an hour. Interns make €15.70 an hour.Interesting.
@drsarehumanstoo: To clarify I mean fully qualified doctors, as opposed to the final year of nursing which I think some people refer to as internship.
@drsarehumanstoo: They might start on less. The ones I know after a few years are on that.
It’s ridiculous though that the commentator above is suggesting agency staff are cheaper.
@Good Early: The HCA might receive 15 euro from an agency. You can bet the agency charges the HSE a lot more.
@Good Early: Agreed!
Nursing employment might be at an “all time high” but that definitely doesn’t mean retention is at an all time high. All this employment is coming from countries like India and the Philippines. While these are fantastic nurses, does anyone ever why all the Irish nurses leave?
Mary Lou is now worried about retention and replacement. Few years ago she was in favor of slashing Consultants salaries even further than Mary Harley (illegally) did.
http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2013/Pre-Budget2014Submission.pdf The problem is that it became impossible to hire consultants, especially to smaller hospitals where on call Rojas are particularly tough. So the hospitals had to pay 3 times as much to hire locums, and those locums don’t have to take any managerial or organizational responsibility, so the remaining permanent Consultants get to earn less whilst doing more work and when they retire or quit nobody will take the jobs. Penny smart, pound stupid?
@Joe Harbison: sorry about the autocorrect!
@Joe Harbison: you are dead right. Politicians pander to populist ignorance and often encourage it.
@Joe Harbison: I prefer a more robust Cabarnet myself when in call.
You need to sort out the zeros guys.
@Peter Carroll: Kinda killed the story with that headline.
Sure that’s nothin. Drop in the ocean compared to all the staff including consultant surgeons and doctors the HSE have on full pay while out on permanent suspension. How come we never hear how much is waisted on staff never going to work again?
@Pajo Mata: Please elaborate. With graphs. And charts. And sources.
@drsarehumanstoo: seriously? Ha ha you think HSE publish this ‘swept under the carpet’ info. No. What we need here is a Prime Time investigation.
@Pajo Mata: Grand so you admit that your random statement is self-created speculation and not fact. Get back when you have facts. Thanks.
Agency or privately employed nurses come out with better pay than HSE employees due to the fact that they do not pay the unfair pension levy, just saying
@Robbie Redmond: Agency staff do not have the luxury of a pension, paid sick leave and holidays or guaranteed work. Just saying.
Varadkar – quote ” Major structural reforms are needed to solve the ”
Wow, really – so I guess you started the ball rolling when you were Health Minister and have just put the finishing touches to it this past 12 months.
Not. It’s a challenge for which you neither have the skillsets or strengths to do, let alone the desire or willpower. And your current minister for health is incompetent in this post.
I wonder how much per day is spent on management?
Our public healthcare expenditure is lower than most European countries. That is why our service is bad.
The reason our total healthcare expenditure is higher than average is because we pour millions into private healthcare which is inefficient, pays for more admin staff rather than more healthcare workers and makes a profit on top of all that useless admin work in the middle.
See the bar chart with both here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
How much do politicians get paid a day?!
How much does the HSE spend on non agency staff? 20m a day?? 1m might be a small percentage which gives flexibility
Just plain stupid mismanagement, nothing else!
Crazy
Idiots!!!!
How much would it cost to pay full time staff including pensions? Let’s see the figures before we all go making partisan statements!
Journal. Ie Where’s the balance here?
have your say