Health payments - HSE paying for rest days

Increments and work bonuses, costing more than €40.8m, are to be paid to 29,032 health workers this year.

Taxpayers are going to have to pay this, even though most of those in the private sector are facing reductions themselves.

The HSE told the Public Accounts Committee it does not know and “cannot determine with reasonable accuracy” which of its staff is paid over €70,000 a year, which amounts to almost twice the average industrial wage.

While most people are being compelled to cut back and the HSE is cutting back on its services, it is paying its own officials more.

Yesterday there was a protest in Longford about cutbacks in funding for disability services, but it could just as easily have been anywhere else in the country.

The HSE admits 9,500 of its staff were paid special allowances in 2010. In one case, a retiring HSE director was paid €186,000 in relation to backdated rest days.

People could hardly be blamed for concluding that those in the HSE are paying themselves to rest. They are effectively cutting services so they can pay themselves more to do less work.

This is an outrage that Government must stop.