Government attacks scale of health job cuts

The Western Health board's plan to axe 200 jobs in a cost-cutting exercise was under fire today from the Government as well as opposition politicians and trade unions.

The Western Health Board claimed the lay-offs of temporary workers followed a directive from the Government.

But health minister Micheal Martin maintained that the number of posts to go exceeded the total requested by his department as part of a bid to achieve nationwide health service savings - and asked the board to justify the scale of the cuts.

Mr Martin said that he believed there should be only 85 job losses in the three counties covered by the board.

In turn, the board insisted that 200 redundancies in clerical, administration and management areas were necessary to meet the €1.5m savings demanded by the Government.

Meanwhile, Dail opposition parties claimed job losses would extend to 2,000 across all eight health boards, and trade unions underscored their total opposition to the cuts.

The IMPACT union said that it would fight the plan as there was no prior consultation and warned that the move would have extremely serious consequences for the level of health care in the region.

Both IMPACT and the SIPTU union demanded an immediate meeting with the Board's Chief Executive Dr Sheelah Ryan.

Fine Gael's health spokeswoman, Olivia Mitchell, said the figures meant that the job losses across the country would be 2,000 for the full year and not the 800 previously announced by the Government.

And the Labour Party spokeswoman on health, Liz McManus, said it was clear the Government had lied to the Irish people in the run-up to last May's general election, when ministers denied any health cuts were being planned.