HSE CHIEF EXECUTIVE Bernard Gloster has said that the recruitment freeze that has been in place for the health service since last year will end tomorrow. 

A recruitment freeze on managerial and administrative posts was introduced last October, after employing over 2,000 more staff members than it had planned or budgeted for that year.

Around a week later, this recruitment freeze was extended to include agency staff and junior doctors, formerly known as non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHD).

It was further extended the following month to include all categories of staff.

Earlier this week, the Government announced that an additional €1.5 billion will be allocated for the health service this year. An extra €1.2 billion will be given for 2025.

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, Gloster said the additional €1.5 billion is permanent money “into the base of the health service”. 

He said the HSE was carrying 4,000 posts “that were essentially unfunded”, which he had a concern for. “Now, thankfully, those posts are funded and secured,” he said. 

Despite the recruitment freeze, more staff were recruited than left the health service. 

Gloster said the ceiling for recruitment is now set at 125,400 full-time equivalents, excluding 20,000 in disability, which was set at 31 December 2023. 

“By the end of this year, the affordable ceiling will be 129,700. So it is quite significant. There’s about 2,300 new development costs in there also within that money.”

Recruitment limits and controls have also been set for the different regions and hospital groups, which cannot be breached, he said.

“The limit is now given to a region which includes the hospital and the community which gives a greater chance of responding to the needs of the population and prioritising appropriately,” Gloster said.

“I’ve had to put in control mechanisms which weren’t there before and which have led us to this type of problem.

“For example, after tomorrow, there will only be about ten people in the country authorised to actually put somebody onto the payroll system.”

He said the HSE has entered into an agreement with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to work within the additional €1.5 billion in funding.

“Of course that will bring us some pressure and challenges, but it requires us to establish a control environment that’s different to what we had before.

“The simple point being that in responding to need and in responding to service growth and development, we simply have to spend what we have and get the best use of that rather than spending what we don’t have.”

He said the use of agency staff would reduce by €80 million, not the €250 million previously discussed in their budget planning.

“The HSE’s dependency on agency in 2019 was €423 million. That has practically doubled, €787 million in 2023. We’ve gone up again slightly on that,” he said.

“Now that we’ve set the limit, now that people can recruit within that limit, we will be retracting back to last summer’s level of agency essentially. That still allows for quite an amount of agency staffing.”

He added that 900 equivalent agency full-time posts will be converted to HSE posts this year.