No clarity on winter plan recruitment but HSE says staff numbers up by 4,800 this year

The HSE hopes to recruit 5,000 staff by the end of December – half for core health services and half for the Covid-19 response. Picture: Larry Cummins

It is not clear how many new staff have been recruited under a winter plan target for 5,000 extra healthcare staff before the end of the year but overall HSE staffing numbers are up by 4,800 in 2020.

Under a €600m winter plan announced in September, the HSE had committed to recruiting 12,500 additional staff between October and April next year, with a target of 5,000 of those by the end of December.

Under the plan, the HSE hopes to recruit 5,000 staff by the end of December – half for core health services and half for the Covid-19 response – with an additional 7,500 staff to be recruited by April next year.

By its own admission, though, the HSE said recruitment commitments came with a “health warning” when the winter plan was announced over two months ago.

This week, the health service could not confirm how many of the 5,000 staffing target have been taken on to date as data is being collated and was “not yet available”.

It did, however, confirm that due to the Covid-19 response, staffing numbers have increased by 4,800 whole-time equivalent (WTE) posts so far this year, with growth across all staff categories.

The biggest increases have been seen in nursing and midwifery (up by 1,404 WTE), medical and dental (up by 951 WTE) and in health and social care (up by 814 WTE).

“This year we have increased staffing levels by over 4,800 WTE,” a spokesperson for the HSE said.

“The largest percentage increase in this is in the staff category of medical and dental at an 8.8% increase,” they added.

The HSE also confirmed that plans to deploy a team and management structure of 800 contact tracers are progressing.

We have over 650 new contact tracers in place and the remaining are joining before the end of the year. 

In addition to the 800 contact tracers, we have an escalation process of trained people, who can be redeployed to support contact tracing, at short notice, should the need arise,” a spokesperson for the HSE said.