€750m health cuts will put patients at risk, nurses warn

TAKING €750 million out of the health service without putting patients at risk will be impossible, nurses warned yesterday.

Health Minister James Reilly said that while there would be an “inevitable and unavoidable” reduction in frontline services he was doing everything possible to diminish the impact of spending cuts.

However, general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation, Liam Doran, said that it would be impossible to maintain safe care and practice in a responsive way with a public health service fit for purpose.

“It just too big an ask,” he said yesterday after he met the HSE chief executive Cathal Magee to discuss the health authority’s 2012 service plan.

“I think frontline services in almost all areas will be severely contracted as a result of the plan,” he said.

“I think it will result in the complete curtailment of in-patient elective work in some hospitals. I don’t think there will be any bed or theatre space for it to happen.”

Mr Doran said he did not believe “the political system” fully understood the extent of the contraction that would arise from the HSE plan.

He said about 1,625 nurses and midwives would be among the 3,000 staff due to leave in the coming weeks.

“Our informed information is about 150 of those are public health nurses.

“That’s almost 10% of the public health nurse population that will disappear in the next six weeks.”

Asked about the possibility of his members having to take pay cuts when all manner of efficiencies were exhausted, Mr Doran said they had already taken their fair share of pain in that area.

“These people who are in very protected jobs and very well-paid jobs had better look elsewhere.”

Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients’ Association questioned the decision to let 3,200 staff go from the health service at the same time.

He said there should be patient impact assessments of any area affected by the planned cuts.

“I understand the need for fiscal rectitude but I still cannot understand random downsizing to make a quick savings in a way that cause enormous infrastructural damage to the service.”

Meanwhile, the chair of the Irish Medical Organisation’s non-consultant hospital doctors committee, Dr Mark Murphy, questioned Dr Reilly’s plan to set up a new grade of hospital doctor by the end of the year to fill the vacuum between junior doctors and consultants.

“We have written some time ago to the Department of Health asking to be involved in the genesis of this grade. If this grade is there for NCHDs, it would seem logical that we have input into it.”