HSE needs to focus on managing its various individual strands

I MET a Health Service Executive (HSE) manager at a conference the other day. It wouldn’t be in his interests for me to tell you who he was or where he came from, but he was frustrated. Very frustrated, in fact.

It happens a lot to senior people in the HSE that when people hear where they work, the conversation always takes a particular turn. Everyone, it seems, has an idea about what the HSE should be doing with its money. And there are particular times when those ideas tend to be expressed enthusiastically, even aggressively.

For instance, the HSE is always in a no-win situation, whether it shows either a deficit or a surplus. A deficit means it can’t manage the money the taxpayers give them. A surplus means it is being mean about the services it should be providing. No other organisation in the country is expected to stick so rigidly to the budgetary parameters decided at the start of the year, and at the same time able to plan for all our futures.