HSE contracts - Cynical stalling we can’t afford

CYNICAL is the only word to describe the Health Service Executive strategy of telling social workers, consultants and other frontline personnel they have been successful at job interviews but then not proceeding to sign their employment contracts.

For several months, the HSE has continued to interview applicants for jobs as if the hiring process designed to bypass the embargo on recruitment in the public service was in full swing.

But in reality it stands accused of playing a game of smoke and mirrors. Because while the executive continues to go through the motions of the statutory recruitment process, people are not being brought over the line in terms of actually giving them jobs.

Effectively, according to the IMPACT trade union, this represents a tangible change of Government policy to exempt certain categories of staff from the recruitment ban. Technically, this ruse, and ruse it certainly is, means ministers can get up in the Dáil and proclaim that the recruitment process is going on as normal. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The repercussions of this negative strategy are being felt in critical areas involving such essential services as social work, occupational, physio and language therapy, as well as hospital consultancy. According to union sources, as many as 200 applicants are waiting in limbo to sign the dotted line of their employment contract.

By delaying the recruitment process, the HSE is stalling on the key Ryan Report recommendation that 270 additional full-time social workers be employed to support adult survivors of child sexual abuse and violence over five decades by priests, brothers and nuns in state-run children’s institutions and parishes around the country where rape and cruelty were endemic.

Significantly, the HSE was strongly criticised earlier this year for misreporting the amount of money it had spent in 2010 on implementing measures of the Ryan report. While it claimed €14.27 million was spent out of a €15m allocation, in fact only €4.68m was spent. Ironically, the error was blamed on including money paid out to agency staff because of delays in recruiting full-time social workers.

With a mounting financial crisis gripping the health service, the fear is that the current delay will not be resolved before the end of the year. The dilemma confronting the HSE is that as long as it delays appointing full-time staff, it will have to go on paying agency workers up to €110 an hour, a short-term and very costly solution.

This situation urgently needs sorting out. Long-fingering appointments could have serious implications. Social workers provide abuse victims with long-term and potentially life-saving support. There can be no justification for putting vulnerable children at risk.