Frontline healthcare faces 'devastating impact'

Frontline healthcare will be severely hit if Health Minister Mary Harney oversees up to €1bn in cuts, critics said today.

Ms Harney warned the search for at least €600m budget savings will prove challenging as Health Service Executive pay cannot be touched.

“I want to make it clear that it won’t be easy. There’s no easy way to take that kind of money out,” she said.

Ms Harney said that most of the €14bn HSE budget goes on salaries – ring-fenced under the Croke Park agreement with the unions.

She suggested that the Government would have to make the savings of between €600m and €1bn out of a third of the health budget.

“That’s going to be really challenging,” she said.

Ms Harney issued the stark warning over future health budgets as Fine Gael revealed €92m was spent on agency staff last year.

It criticised the public sector recruitment freeze and claimed the embargo was forcing hospitals to hire expensive temporary nursing staff and locum doctors.

James Reilly, the party’s health spokesman, warned these costs must be reduced, along with absenteeism, before the HSE tries to cut on the front line.

“While it may not be possible to cut the agency staff bill down to nothing, this suggests tens of millions of euro could be saved by addressing the issue,” Dr Reilly said.

“There are seriously inefficient practices that need to be addressed.”

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) repeated its call for a crisis summit on the health services to be convened immediately.

Liam Doran, INMO general secretary, warned that patient care will be severely compromised and frontline services significantly curtailed under the cuts.

“Faced with the current economic realities, stark and difficult choices will have to be made but, in the context of a public health service, all decisions must put the patient first and ensure that frontline staff, providing direct care, are given the required resources,” he said.

The INMO said a health summit, chaired by Ms Harney, would allow a focus on initiatives to protect essential services amid swingeing cuts.

The nurses and midwives group also called for the Government to acknowledge that the health service needs a minimum level of funding to care for the ill and vulnerable.

Jan O’Sullivan, Labour’s health spokeswoman, said care services would collapse under such severe cuts.

“Savage cutbacks on that level will certainly have a devastating impact on frontline services, and are unacceptable as far as the Labour Party is concerned,” she said.

Ms O’Sullivan added: “I really wonder just why Mary Harney is still the Minister for Health. She doesn’t seem to care if people who rely on the services provided by the HSE end up suffering when they are reduced or scrapped altogether.

“For the sake of our health services I genuinely believe that it is time for Mary Harney to go.”

Paul Bell, Siptu’s acting national health organiser, also warned patients to expect frontline services to be hit.

“Past experience shows that the axe wielded by the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, and the HSE is too blunt to ensure savings are not at the expense of services being delivered directly to the public,” Mr Bell said.

“All the evidence from the past is that if these cuts go ahead, they will hit services such as home helps, mental health and elective surgery for people waiting for things like hip and knee replacements.”

Siptu warned cuts of this scale could hit the viability of many hospitals.

Sinn Féin Health spokesperson and Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said that the level of cuts threatend would cost lives.

“Such cuts would devastate the public health system," Deputy Ó Caoláin said.

"I have no doubt that the loss of services across the system on such a scale, especially in our public hospitals, would be so severe that lives will be lost."