Consultation promise over health budget cuts

Management and staff will be fully consulted on a plan to slash €1bn from the health services budget next year, the Taoiseach said today.

The Health Service Executive announced it wants to hack €400m on 2009 spending on top of €530m euro savings outlined yesterday.

However unions want to bring alternative cost-cutting proposals to the Government which they say won’t impact so heavily on patient care.

The HSE’s controversial National Service Plan for 2009 includes plans to review 11 accident and emergency units in Dublin and Cork in a bid to trim its annual €14bn budget.

The Taoiseach told the Dáil: “It is a plan that will require more than ever the active involvement of staff at all levels to make the changes necessary to deliver it.

“The goals we wish to see across all areas can only be achieved with real co-operative engagement between management and staff, with commitment to all patients first and foremost.

“The whole purpose of driving these efficiencies is to maintain services, not to cut services.”

The Irish Nursing Organisation (INO) along with health unions wants the Government to charge private patients the full cost of treatment in public hospitals which would yield €113m.

Diverting cash to the HSE from the National Treatment Purchase Fund could realise a further €100m, the representatives bodies said.

INO spokesman Liam Doran said his organisation will play its full part in maximising efficiencies in the interest of maintaining services.

He warned: “The government and the HSE must accept that the proposals currently tabled, regardless of how they are packaged, will have a very serious impact upon front line services and result in much suffering for people most in need in our society.

“In the pending discussions with Government we will propose alternative ways of saving, the Public Health Service, significant monies in order to allow and ensure essential front line services continue to be delivered.”

In the Dáil, Opposition leader Enda Kenny queried the true impact of the almost one billion euro cuts on waiting lists and patient care.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said there were 390 people in trolleys in A&E units - 10 less than the number when a national emergency was declared in the sector by Health Minister Mary Harney in 2006.

But Mr Cowen told the Opposition: “If you want to portray the health service as being totally dysfunctional in every way, that is your point of view but it is not fair on those in the health service and it is certainly not the experience of the vast majority who receive health services in this country.”

Mr Gilmore branded the government “politically and economically dysfunctional and staggering, exhausted to the Christmas break.”

He added: “This government is appalling. It is a deadbeat government. It is not able to lead the Government out of the current problems that