Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called the spending of \u20ac318 million on temporary agency staff by the HSE as a terrible waste of money, and another example of the continued privatisation of our health care system. The figures were released by the HSE to his Sinn F\u00e9in colleague, Louise O Reilly TD.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said this massive spend highlights the complete dependency of some hospitals on agency staff, with sums of between \u20ac9 million and \u20ac11 million being spent by hospitals across the State.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continuous spending of hundreds of millions of Euro by the HSE on temporary agency staff is outrageous, a terrible waste of taxpayers\u2019 money, and another example of the continued privatisation of our health care system.<\/p>\n
\u201c2018 saw the single biggest increase in agency spending since 2014. The spending total jumped by \u20ac26m on the previous year to a staggering \u20ac318m for 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince 2011 Fine Gael governments have spent almost \u20ac2bn on temporary agency staff to fill public staffing gaps because they have continuously failed to address the recruitment and retention crisis that is impacting on all our hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe over-reliance on, and the use of costly and more expensive, agency staff is a direct result of the escalation of the recruitment and retention crisis under this government. This has led to frontline nurses taking the unprecedented step to go on strike recently<\/p>\n
\u201cAgency staff were originally intended to plug temporary and short term gaps in rosters, but these figures prove that there is now a reliance on agency staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dependency on agency staff is some hospitals is enormous. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda spent \u20ac9m on agency staff, the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise has spent over \u20ac10m, while University Hospital Limerick spent a whopping \u20ac11m.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister for Health, Simon Harris, cannot plead ignorance or absolve himself from blame here. Like the over spend of \u20ac450 million on the building of the National Children\u2019s Hospital on the St. James\u2019 site, this is his mess.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimon Harris is the lead Minister and responsible for the health service haemorrhaging nearly a million Euro a day on temporary agency staff. He is ideologically more comfortable filling staffing gaps with private staff than building a public health service that delivers for patients and the staff that work within our health system.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called the spending of \u20ac318 million on temporary agency staff by the HSE as a terrible waste of money, and another example of the continued privatisation of our health care system. The figures were released by the HSE to his Sinn F\u00e9in colleague, Louise O Reilly TD. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-hse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3721,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions\/3721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}