HSE staff sick days cost taxpayers €225m last year

Sick days for workers in the HSE cost taxpayers over €225m last year, with tens of thousands of days lost to absenteeism.

Absenteeism in other state agencies cost the state tens of millions of euro more.

Figures show that health, finance, and social protection were some of the worst offenders when it came to extensive numbers of sick days.

The details emerged as the Labour Court issued a binding recommendation that will see certified and uncertified sick pay entitlements in the public service halved.

The bill for health workers under the HSE who took sick days last year amounted to €225m.

Despite a target of 3.5% for absenteeism set for this year, the overall rate of sick leave for HSE staff in 2011 was 4.9%, and is 5% in 2012 to date. This means an estimated 5,000 health staff are off sick every day.

Some 68,975 sick days were clocked up by Revenue staff last year, at a cost of €10.3m. Sick days for six agencies under the Department of Justice amounted to over €15m. Fine Gael’s Simon Harris obtained the figures in a series of parliamentary questions.