The Department of Health has moved to clarify the position following an instruction by the Health Service Executive to hospitals to cease hiring new staff.
In a statement issued to The Irish Times, the department said that retiring staff can still be replaced, or recruitment can proceed, where it is within currently allocated budgets.
But pending the completion of a new "pay and numbers" strategy, which sets out the staffing requirements throughout the hospital sector, hospitals have been told by the HSE that they must stay within their budgets.
“The HSE are currently preparing their 2016 pay and numbers strategy. While these plans are being developed, interim recruitment measures have been put in place by the HSE, which require that pay budgets are complied with,” the department said.
“These measures do not impact on a hospital’s ability to recruit where funding exists to facilitate that recruitment, for example in the case of replacement posts or where funding has been allocated for particular roles under the HSE service plan or in areas of critical care and of emergency services.”
Hiring freeze
A senior health source said: “This is not a hiring freeze like 2009. If a nurse retires, she can be replaced. But hospitals have to live within their budgets.”
As they settle into their briefs, all Ministers are being told by their officials that their departments urgently need funding increases. Political sources yesterday put the HSE’s move in this context.
However, senior health sources say that provision will be made for additional doctors and nurses once the HSE presents its pay and numbers strategy, which is expected in the Department of Health in the coming days.
According to the Department of Health, the HSE has increased staffing levels, including nursing numbers, over the past two years though there is still some way to go before they reach 2009 levels.
Nurses
“An extra 1,300 staff have been employed in the health sector in the first quarter of 2016, the majority in frontline positions. In relation to nursing, the number employed has increased from 34,680 in April 2014 to 35,925 in April 2016,” the department said.
However, there was sharp criticism of the HSE move from health sector interests.
The president of the Irish Medical Organisation, Dr John Duddy, said the crude introduction of the ban was a "hammer blow to efforts to tackle the serious manpower crisis in Irish hospitals".
“The Irish health service is understaffed,” Dr Duddy said in a statement. “There are 300 vacant consultant posts and newly-qualified doctors are emigrating rather than staying to work here. We are experiencing unprecedented difficulty in encouraging doctors to work in our public health service and in these circumstances it is ironic that the message from the HSE is don’t bother to apply – there is no future in Irish public hospitals.”
Deputy general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation David Hughes said it will exacerbate an already difficult situation.
“The health service and hospitals are already operating under severe strain due to lack of staffing. We are short by over 3,600 nurses and midwives already and this embargo will make an intolerable situation utterly impossible.”
