The HSE has been ordered to merge hospitals into new administrative groups with a single budget and a staff ceiling as part of plans to cut costs, high-level administration, and patient waiting times.

It has emerged a lump sum severance payment of €430,000 is to be paid to the outgoing Secretary General of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan.

The top civil servant in the Department of Health is to step down in the coming months with a retirement package of over €430,000 and an annual pension of €107,000 per year.

THE HSE, described as a vital new structure for the health service just seven years ago, is to be replaced with seven speciality-specific directorates.

The Government has approved the drafting of new laws replacing the HSE with a new seven-part system.

OVER years when health services were creaking, a fund controlled by a SIPTU official funded lavish overseas junkets for senior trade union officials and public servants, the Dáil public spending watchdog heard yesterday.

THE number of people treated on hospital trolleys this winter is 25% higher than this time last year — and may grow further if more people cancel their health insurance due to budget-induced price hikes.

VHI customers will have suffered a massive 120% increase in their health insurance cost since the start of the recession if the insurer imposes a threatened 50% budget-induced price rise.

AN internal report outlining how the hospital system will be reconfigured — including the exact services to be moved from 10 small hospitals — is set to be given to Health Minister Dr James Reilly.

IN the ongoing drive to restore Department of Health control over the day-to-day running of the health service, a handful of department officials have been appointed to a new interim board of the Health Service Executive (HSE).

A new interim executive board of the HSE has been appointed.

THE proposed closure of an intensive care unit (ICU) at Nenagh General Hospital has been put on hold.

The new Health Minister Dr. James Reilly will give the keynote address at the 7th Annual National Healthcare Conference, which is due to take place later this morning.

A LETTER signed by former Health Minster Micheál Martin authorising the continued payment of funds into the controversial SKILL programme health sector training fund will be scrutinised at a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing today.

A BLAME game has erupted between the Health Service Executive and the Departments of Finance and Health as to who was responsible for letting the spending and governance of the controversial SKILL training fund spiral out of control.

Two senior trade union officials were the signatories to a bank account at the centre of a State training scheme expenses controversy, it emerged today.

STAFF at state-aided voluntary bodies face wage cuts of more than €20 million after the Government told the Health Service Executive to press ahead with the cuts, despite the Tánaiste’s assertion they would not be affected.

UP to 2,700 sick children are on waiting lists for surgery or other procedures because they are not being referred for private care that they are entitled to under the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).

Taxpayers could be hit with a €50m bill after a blunder by health chiefs and Government officials who drew up the lucrative new hospital consultants’ pay deal.

MEDICAL staff were doing nixers in a public hospital for Barringtons private clinic in Limerick, it has emerged.

Health chiefs were tonight locked in last-ditch talks to strike a deal on new consultants’ contracts and avoid another bitter row with medics.

A fresh round of talks is due to take place today in a final bid to reach agreement on contentious new contracts for hospital consultants.

HOSPITAL consultants have been warned today is D-day for completion of talks on a new work contract.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte today warned developers in talks with the Government about building private ’super-clinics’ on public land not to sign contracts ahead of the general election.

CONTRACTS for Health Minister Mary Harney’s contentious private hospital plan could be signed in April, just a matter of weeks before the general election.

Marts: Friesian bull calves, suitable for export, made gains of up to €40/head at yesterday’s sales as an active presence of shippers increased competition.

PATIENTS illegally charged by the State for public nursing home care will be given 28 days to accept or reject the offers of repayment made to them.

MORE THAN 10,000 people registered with an intellectual disability are not getting the State care they need, TDs warned last night.

Compensation payments to elderly patients illegally charged in public nursing homes since the 1970s will begin next month, it emerged today.

PLANS to almost double capacity for dialysis patients at a Dublin hospital where services are already overstretched face further delays following a Government request for a value-for-money (VFM) audit.

Incompetent dentists, nurses, opticians and pharmacists could be named and shamed under new laws, it emerged today.

HEALTH chiefs last night sparked alarm by admitting they do not know how much is being spent on their computer system upgrades as the Government moves to pump billions more into the projects.

A FLAGSHIP €143 million health scheme to get patients off waiting lists by paying for them to go private has been criticised after figures show more than a third of those helped were treated in the same hospital that left them languishing in the first place.

THE Department of Finance warned just last month that the FISP system could end up costing even more than PPARS.

FIGURES used by the head of the Department of Health to suggest that Ireland has too many nurses are wrong, the Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) says.

THE State is preparing to write off a substantial portion of the €9 million owed to it by GPs, but it remains to be seen if they will repay the reduced amount.

AWAY PRINCESS, owned by Con Kelleher from Donoughmore, Co. Cork, realised the top price at a very successful Cork Greyhound Sales at Curraheen Park on Tuesday when he was sold to the Swift Leisure Syndicate from Clonmel, Co, Tipperary for €3,200.