HSE paid €12m to recruitment firms in two years

Just 7,000 of the 73,000 who answered the 'Be on Call for Ireland' initiative were ever contacted, yet the HSE paid €12m to recruitment firms between 2020 and 2021. Picture: David Keane.

The Health Service Executive paid out more than €12m to recruitment firms in 2021 and 2020, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

Information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the HSE spent around €2.7m on recruitment firms' hiring services  in 2020.

This expenditure increased significantly in 2021 when the health service handed out more than €9.3m to recruitment agencies, including more than €2.5m each to two different firms.

Recruitment

In 2020, Kate Cowhig International Recruitment was not among the top 20 recruitment firms in Ireland in terms of HSE payments. However, in 2021, Ms Cowhig’s firm took in more than €2.6m from the health service for recruitment services.

TTM Healthcare Ltd. also took in more than €2.5m in 2021 from the HSE, while the company was paid around €326,000 by the HSE the previous year.

Meanwhile, CPL Solutions and CPL Healthcare saw a slight increase in their payments from the HSE for recruitment services during the same period.

In providing the above information, the HSE said that payments made to the top 20 firms, totalling around €12m over the past two years, covers around 90 per cent of the recruitment costs identified in those years.

Some HSE locations and services provided reasoning behind the increase in recruitment agency costs between 2020 and 2021.

In the case of TTM Healthcare, it was stated that certain recruitment services outsourced to the company by the HSE’s National Recruitment Service (NRS) in Manorhamilton contributed to an increase of €2.3m in 2021.

Additional staffing requirements in the University of Limerick Hospital Group were also highlighted due to new developments, including new bed blocks, additional ICU and HDU capacity, as well as Winter Plan 2020-2021 initiatives, which contributed to an increase in costs in 2021.

The HSE also indicated an increase in headcount regarding nursing support for Covid vaccination and testing centres, as well as an increase in recruitment of overseas nursing staff, as factors relating to increased recruitment expenditure.

Results

However, Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould has queried the level of expenditure on recruitment firms.

He highlighted the ‘Be On Call for Ireland’ campaign which launched in March 2020, encouraging healthcare workers retired or abroad to make themselves available for working on the frontline in Ireland.

However, by June 2020, it was revealed that while 73,000 people had put themselves forward to help, just 7,000 were interviewed and just over 100 had been employed in the health service.

“In March 2020, we saw the ‘Be On Call’ initiative garner a huge response with tens of thousands of qualified healthcare workers offering to assist this state,” said Mr Gould.

“Only a minimal fraction of these were actually employed and then we see the HSE spending millions on recruitment.

“There are clearly serious questions to be asked here of why those who were willing to come and work for the health service were not taken up on their interest,” he added. “The health service is in crisis and, while we do need more healthcare staff, we also need to be very aware that we are losing staff because of the pay and conditions of their employment.

“Instead of paying recruitment firms to replace these, the HSE and the Minister for Health need to also be working to retain them.” The HSE was contacted for additional comment.