Fórsa’s head of health, Éamonn Donnelly, has said there will be a continued need for temporary staff redeployments into hospital and community health settings, which are set to resume normal health service delivery over the coming weeks.

In meetings this week, he told the HSE that existing staff numbers were insufficient to resume all standard services while continuing to deal with coronavirus cases and stepping up Covid-19 testing and contact tracing.

Testing and tracing is a central plank of the Government’s plans to gradually relax restrictions on movement and activity across society and the economy.

Fórsa says the bulk of reassignments have so far been within the health sector, and that it would be impossible to move staff back to normal work without either leaving gaps in the coronavirus response or finding additional qualified staff from elsewhere.

The union says that the resumption of normal health services will create an immediate demand for some staff reassigned to Covid duties to return to their substantive posts. This risks creating gaps in the pandemic response.

There is already a qualified and willing pool of workers in struggling community ‘section 39’ agencies, which are independent of the HSE but receive public money to provide disability, homelessness, addiction and other services.

Éamonn said: “Health staff want a rapid resumption of normal services in hospitals and community settings. But we simply don’t have the numbers to do it while the pandemic continues to make such high demands.

“Weeks ago, Fórsa proposed that trained and qualified community and voluntary agency staff could be quickly deployed in residential and other health settings. This now needs to happen as a matter of urgency,” he said.

Two months ago, Fórsa proposed that section 39 workers be brought into the HSE for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. But the health department won’t agree because it fears the move would lead to marginal additional short-term costs.

The delivery of non-Covid-19 health services are set to increase between now and late June under the Government’s ‘roadmap for reopening society and business’, which was published earlier this month.

It’s never been more important – or more easy – to get the protections and benefits of union membership. Join Fórsa HERE or contact us HERE.