Healthcare staff stage protest in Cork over lack of recruitment

About 50 healthcare staff protested at St Finbarr’s Hospital at lunchtime yesterday over the HSE recruitment embargo, which they claim has not been lifted — just renamed.

Kathryn Courtney, industrial relations executive at the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, told The Echo the protest was “in opposition to the ‘pay and numbers strategy’, which is actually an extension of the recruitment embargo, just by a different name”.

Liz Fay, an assistant general secretary with Fórsa, explained that unions had been promised there would be engagement as to measures related to the recruitment embargo, but claimed “no such engagement happened”.

She said: “What did come out was in July of this year a document called the ‘Pay and Numbers Strategy’, basically setting out the HSE’s intent as to recruitment into the health sector for the next number of years.

“It is a cap of the numbers of people who can be employed by the HSE, so essentially a jobs cut by any other name. There was no engagement with any trade union in the health sector. It has meant a huge swathe of posts that were vacant by way of resignation or retirement, those jobs essentially disappeared out of the sector.

“This has meant a huge drop in the morale of our members and it is having a knock-on effect with regards to service delivery — increased waiting lists, reduction in services that can be safely delivered and, in some instances, people carrying the workload of three or four people.”

Budget deficits

Siptu organiser Natasha Linehan Treacy said: “In essence, the ‘pay and numbers strategy’ dictates that regional executive officers can recruit staff, but only on condition that they have funding to do so.

“Given that most, if not all, HSE areas are running at budget deficits, the opportunity to recruit staff and backfill posts that have been vacated since the implementation of the embargo in October 2023 is not within the budget allocation at this point in time.”

Meanwhile, Ms Courtney explained: “With the expansion of services into communities, we don’t have the staff to provide the care we want to give to patients that use our services. We’re increasing our bed capacity in community hospitals, but we’re not getting the staff to provide that safe care people deserve.

“The recruitment embargo was supposed to be finished in July, but not one post in nursing that we are aware of has been filled since then. All of these posts that had been vacant are just left vacant. Our directors are reporting that business plans they’re submitting are being refused.”

Balloting

The protest follows others around the country, as the unions say they are balloting their members on industrial action.

People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Mick Barry was among the protesters, and said: “More than 90% of nurses polled feel that inadequate staffing levels are putting patients at risk. There should be one registered nurse for every four patients in busy acute surgical wards, whereas the reality is the actual ratio is much higher than that.

“Safe staffing levels are enshrined in law in California. They should be enshrined in law here too.”

The HSE was contacted for comment.