Government massaging health spend figures, claims Sinn Féin TD

Government spending on agency staff for acute hospitals has increased by more than 60% since 2011 with more than €207m being paid to such workers last year.

Meanwhile, our public hospitals sent more than 31,000 referrals to private hospitals last year in an attempt to cut waiting lists.

The figures are obtained in parliamentary responses to questions by Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane who has accused the Government of “massaging” health-spending statistics by maintaining a recruitment embargo in the HSE for several years while simultaneously spending large sums on employing agency workers, mainly nurses, and outsourcing hospital procedures.

The amount spent on agency staff in 2011, the year the Fine Gael-Labour government came into power, was more than €127m and this increased to more than €232m in 2014, and went back to €207m last year, across more than 50 acute hospitals.

Among the largest increases in such spending were at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, up from €799,764 in 2011 to €5.35m last year; the Midlands Regional Hospital in Mullingar, from €2.7m in 2011 to almost €8.2m last year; Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, from €1.23m in 2011 to €6.65m last year; and Letterkenny General Hospital, from €4.65m in 2011 in €9.75m in 2015.

The biggest spender on agency staff last year was Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, which used more than €14m to fill employee gaps last year; the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise spent just over €4m on agency staff in 2011 but more than €12m last year; while Limerick University Hospital had agency spending of €11.875m in 2015, a 500%-plus increase from its 2011 figure of €1.94m.

Some hospitals saw their total spend on agency staff fall since 2011, including the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street (down from €1.33m to €757,000; Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan (from €6.08m to €5.63m), Cork University Hospital (down from more than €10m in 2011 to €6m last year) and Our Lady’s Crumlin which spent €2.13m on agency employees in 2011 and €669,000 last year.

Meanwhile, other figures obtained by Mr Cullinane show that 31,196 patients were referred to private hospitals from the public system last year under the Department of Health’s “outsourcing initiative”.

This initiative cost €51.4m and included “additional costs associated with supplementary treatment capacity,” according to the department.

That compared with €4.495m spent in 2013 on the outsourcing initiative, which concerned “outpatients only” and involved 27,608 people.

Mr Cullinane said that the Government’s spend on agency staff increased by 68% between 2011 and last year.

“The Government over the last number of years was saying it was saving money by having an embargo on recruitment, but they were not. They were simply outsourcing it. Rather than directly employing people in the public sector they were outsourcing procedures and hiring agency staff,” he said.

He called on individual acute hospitals to “apply for funding separately as part of their own budgets” to ensure they have enough staff, rather than relying on agency workers.

“It’s just massaging the figures,” he said.