The continuing recruitment freeze in the HSE risks increasing waiting times for patients, demoralising staff and providing poor value for public money. That’s according to an internal draft document produced by the HSE.

In media reports this week the HSE’s draft report - Budget 2024: Requirement to Cease Recruitment for Approved Development Posts – nevertheless insists on the financial need to continue the pause on recruitment.

The findings are revealed as Fórsa’s industrial action in response to the recruitment freeze continues, leading to the cancellation of several regional health forums, in addition to delays to answers to parliamentary questions and ministerial representations.

Fórsa and the HSE are due to return to the WRC early next month.

Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan wrote to the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil, Séan Ó Fearghaíl, this week, in response to correspondence about delays in the political system because of the industrial action.

Kevin said: “It should be noted that the Minister and the HSE have attempted to characterise the growth in clerical and administration staffing levels as excessive. However, they fail to draw attention to the fact that the growth is largely explained by the conversion of staff who were employed during the pandemic to normal status.

“These staff are necessary to support the delivery of health services. A failure to provide for replacements will only add to the already discredited and expensive recourse to outsourcing and consultancy on the part of the HSE,” he said.

Fórsa’s head of Health and Welfare, Ashley Connolly, said the union had campaigned last year to highlight that the HSE was “burning through tens of millions in cash on external consultants and agency staff” putting the health body into the grip of another series of cost overruns.

She added: “Our members have responded to the recruitment freeze with a precise and measured form of industrial action designed and directed to frustrate senior management, that can be felt by the political system, while minimising the effect on patients and other service users.

“The blunt instrument of a moratorium on recruitment – blocking posts already sanctioned in last year’s service plan – does the opposite.

“It hurts patients, staff and other service users, while letting senior management off the hook, and quietly mollifies the political system by being able to claim a reduction in costs. The HSE’s approach to its self-inflicted problems is - in any fair analysis – untenable,” she said.

Ashley said Fórsa remains committed to a negotiated solution and would return to the Workplace Relations Commission next month to attempt to resolve the current impasse, and ensure members are not overwhelmed by a shortage of staff in their workplaces.

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