HSE's focus is on finance, not patient safety, says INMO general secretary

Vivienne Clarke

The focus of the health service is now on finances rather than patient safety, according to the general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, who was commenting ahead of a series of lunchtime protests about staff shortages.

The current ceilings and caps on recruitment were very restrictive, she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland. “The process of recruitment has become increasingly more difficult.”

Ms Ní Sheaghdha pointed out that every report into the health service cited staffing levels as the main issue.

“What we want is legislation to ensure that when we make agreements about safe staffing, they are measured on patient safety, that they're implemented, but they're not subject to annual cuts and delays in recruitment which are purposefully introduced. That is causing the service to be unsafe.”

Directors of nursing have been “stripped of their authority to recruit where they see gaps and where they see need. And there is a focus now on the finances as opposed to patient safety. And that is what health care workers who work in the system are objecting to.”

There were more people applying for nursing posts than there were places available, she added.

“We need to increase those places. We have constantly raised the issue of the annual planning versus the multiannual planning.

"You need to plan well in advance to staff a health service where you have an ageing population, or you have a growing population, and where your need has been defined by many experts as increasing and putting in caps and moratoriums periodically because you're over budget. It just tells the story that there is nobody actually looking at the longer term view for the health service.”

Ms Ní Sheaghdha clarified that the moratorium and recruitment had not been lifted last July.

“In fact, what happened in July of this year was that the HSE decided that all posts that were not physically filled in December 2023 were gone. So it's actually worse.

"We now have a situation where, by our figures, there were just over 2,000 vacancies in the nursing and midwifery professions and the system is now being told that they can't fill those because they don't exist. That's because in July, by the stroke of a pen, it was decided that they were gone.

“They are necessary. They are required for patients who attend our hospitals. I was at a meeting last night, a community meeting, where people said it is just incredible when they go and attend the public health service, they can see the shortage.

"It's visible, but obviously the HSE are announcing that the finances are overstretched. Therefore, we are not going to provide sufficient staff to provide safe care.

“Everybody who works in the system and the reason they're protesting today will continue those protests next week is because they want to work in a safe system.”