More than 100 HSE managers with €100,000 salaries

THE revelation that more than 100 senior managers in the Health Service Executive (HSE) are being given €100,000 was castigated by the Labour Party yesterday.

This salary is equivalent to the top-ranking assistant secretary grade in the civil service and the Department of Finance has been made aware of the increase in the number of senior managers within the HSE.

Health spokeswoman for the Labour Party, Deputy Liz Mc Manus, described the increase as another sign that “bureaucratic bloating is increasing” since the HSE took over.

News of this latest pay deal comes less than a week after it emerged that HSE Chief, Professor Brendan Drumm is to be paid a €32,000 bonus on top of his €400,000 salary. The bonus was based on his having managed the transition to the HSE, shown leadership skills and successfully balanced the HSE budget.

A number of reasons are being put forward for the rise in salaries, including a deal struck by the interim-HSE management and the unions in late 2004 which averted industrial action.

Under the deal, such executives who didn’t receive top-level positions in the new structure maintained existing conditions. Staff appointed to senior posts in the HSE also went in at the top of the salary scale, leading to another increase in the €100k salary bracket. Managers’ pay packets were also bolstered by the 7% increase awarded last year by the Review Body on Remuneration in the Public Service.

Deputy Mc Manus said it is another example of how the HSE experiment is failing.

“This really is significant and just follows on from news that nine months into the job, Prof Drumm was given a €32,000 bonus, even though A&E is still atrocious, people can’t afford to go to the doctors and there is gross inequality in access to the health services. Are we getting value for money from all of these bonuses and management? I don’t think so,” she said.

“Health service reform was supposed to streamline the health service and make it more transparent …it now appears that the opposite is happening,” she said.

A HSE spokesman said there hadn’t been a big increase in senior managers since the onset of HSE but were unable to provide comparisons with the former health board era.