O Reilly has not one but three advisors
One who lives in the UK

This is a joke
Our whole government are a joke

Weak Government ministers like Brendan Howlin that don’t have the balls they were born with are to blame for this catastrophe! His idea of reform revolved around letting anyone who wanted to leave, walk away with a big payoff and guaranteed pension! FFS how can you run a business like that? It’s a sad day for Ireland when protecting overpaid, underworked fat cats salaries is more important than people’s lives! Croke park has to be torn up now. Most of the population knew it was unaffordable when it was negotiated in the first place. What kind of men are Enda Kenny and his cronies, when they are so scared of Unions that they’re prepared to let people die? How they can sleep at night goes beyond me. Cowards in power are more dangerous than fools in power! The next few weeks will be hugely defining as in where this country is heading!

If you eliminated all consultants salaries it wouldn’t dent the overall spend of this bloated monster that is totally out of control with bully boy Unions and all other vested interests lying on a daily basis in respect of the realities of what they’re costing.
If there is one person in the world that I feel sorry for it is the current Minister for Health….he hasn’t a chance in hell.
Start by removing all staff payments for sick days. Every working week must be a minimum of forty hours…no discussion or debate. Flexi time must be compulsory to suit Management whereby services can be provided outside the usual nine to five. All administrative staff must volunteer at least four hours per week at the coal face even if that is as simple as taking telephone calls and they’re Senior Management.
All General Practitioners must be paid on a fee per service basis only and all existing contracts cancelled. All patient other than emergencies must be referred to hospitals by Family Doctors or they will not be seen. Unnecessary referrals will result in financial penalties .
That would make a good start.

@Mick There is so much wrong with your answer to cure everything that I don’t know where to start. If you somehow managed to eliminate the consultants saleries that would make a considerable dent in this mess, €600,000,000. Of course you’d then have a problem with no consultants but we’ll move on. Oh, you may not like the “bully boy unions” (no, I’m not a member) but sometimes they’re right and fighting for the rights of you and others.
People do get sick, it’s common sense that those working with the sick, diseased and dying will tend to become ill themselves, at a greater rate than the rest of us. If you want someone who can potentially infect you treating you then this could work but Lister and Nightingale found it to be a bad idea.
Generally everyone works a 39 hour week, they don’t decide this, they may work up to a maximum of 48 hours per week as per the European working time Directive.
Some staff in some areas do work flexi time, however this does not apply to everyone, everyone wishes it would as they would prefer to work flexi time.
You cannot require staff to volunteer, if they work they get paid. There are all sorts of issues involved such as insurance. There are of course certain exceptions to this, while the HSE announced last week that all NCHD’s would cease to be paid overtime in the HSE North East this is a lie, they will continue to work overtime – they just won’t be paid for it.
All GP’s would jump at the chance of being paid on a per service basis, as it stands all GP’s are paid a flat fee for every medical card patient on their books annually, regardless if they see that patient every day and perform several tests and an in depth examination or once a year, the payment is the same.
So you want all patients to check in with their GP first, to ensure it isn’t an emergency, what if it is? That pain in the arm isn’t always indicitive of a heart attack, sure it could be a pulled muscle, so you go to the GP’s and wait around for 10 hours as that is what’ll happen with everyone going to them first. Or, you could go to your local A&E Department, get triaged, they’d know straight away to be concerned and have you on a monitor in minutes and know you’re having a heart attack. Yes the folks out in the waiting room with bumps and scrapes, puking and feeling terrible will live and be seen in time, but you’ll live too.
Our system isn’t perfect, it doesn’t always work but when it works it works well and those who work in our Public Services are, by and large hard working decent people who EARN what they are paid. Are some of the managers and consultants overpaid? Without doubt, but when there are general ststements to break the CP Deal its the frontline staff who’ll be hit, not the overpaid managers at the top.

well put! its amazing to me how they cant see the proper way to cut costs in the hse!!

The actual wording is, “to provide assurances to the Troika” but its the same thing isn’t it really.

Troika are giving us the money because we dont have enough ourselves.

HSE is overspending.

Do you honestly expect the troika to keep giving us money to piss away?

@Chris AS REQUIRED BY PUBLIC SERVICE UNIONS.

Scrape croke park agreement…only way to save costs.

Gavin. You are dead right. The trolls don’t sem to realise that when we cannot pay we can’t play. It is disgraceful , but a fact. Scream as might, when the purse is empty , it is empty. Those of you who voted FF , hang your head in shame. The problem is the monolithic HSE that was set up. They were throwing money around like snuff at a wake.
The HSE should be disband of transferred into the category of a semi state company and not public service. That way it can be told to make cuts where needed , including obscene salaries for consultants and management. We are in a mess here and we ought to do everything to try to put it to rights . It is terrible to hear of sick people being on waiting lists for abnormal periods of time. As a matter of interest , withe the HSE, what do the people employed by the Dept of Health do , anyway?

@Roey I think the stock answer to you last question is “as little as possible”.

Why does it have to be health, Suspend all local councils or disband them for five years. Let the Managers run them, what you save from Councillors wages and expenses would fill that pot-hole. In the meantime, reform local government and hold elections in five years time for a new system!

Totally cutting in the wrong places…. How about each area stop buying equipment that is not need. Each area are given a budget each year if they don’t spend all of it the balance is returned and the following year their budget is cut by that amount so to prevent this as the year comes to an end each area spend whats left by buying equipment etc that just gets out into storage so that their areas budget is not cut the following year…. Some or even most of that equipment is NEVER used!!!!
Also the HSE is way to top heavy and will come falling down as the on the ground staff gets further reduced. They may have beds but eventually they’ll have no staff that can look after the patients only the ones that can push pens. Disgraceful

In comes another fat cat.

Ah sure good ol Ireland. Pay unsecured bondholders while our citizens who need the states help the most go without treatment, suffer in pain, suffer in silence, allowed to be humiliated in corridors, be told the waiting list just got longer and if you do get seen the staff who treat you are underpaid and overworked. Never mind if you do get treated the drugs are overpriced, supposed cheaper generic drugs afford little savings due to corrupt policy makers and if you are unable to work as a result the government will refuse you illness or disability benefits.

Yes this is Ireland in 2012, this is what you can expect from your government after working all your life and dutifully paying your taxes.

Utter misery.

“This had been demanded by the government in order to provide assurances to the Troika about the ability to deliver savings in the sector, he said – before adding that he was committed to enacting further cuts…”

This says everything about what the government think of the Irish people. Cutting costs in an already deficient health service to pay a bunch of gamblers.

Shame on them!

It’s not their responsibility to say exactly where the money comes from. The government are free to reduce the HSE budget by cutting top-end salaries rather than from front-line services. Of they choose not to do that, the responsibility lies with them, and not the Troika.

He defended the rise in the media today

Wow. Here it is plane as day, corruption at play with people’s lives.

I agree completely the Public Service Employment embargo is what is at the cause of a lot of this overspend. Agency staff should never be used to replace a person who should have been hired to do a job long term and that is exactly what has happened. It costs the state far more in the long run and I agree that the agencies are largely reeping the benefits, meanwhile the taxpayers foot the bill. Its ridiculous management ! I recently had to wait two years for a simple procedure as a private patient because there were no beds in my area available, in the end I had to travel nearly 100 miles to get the simple procedure done and that was before these cuts!

Well Joanne if you thought two years was a long wait you ‘aint seen nothin’ yet, I’m certain there are even more cuts to be announced soon. It really rattles my cage that all this time during the employment embargo there have been a select few employment agencies making hundreds of millions annually from the HSE alone when all along if the right thing had been done we would’nt be where we are now.
Many also see our elderly population as commodities, if they have property or any assets then they have value, something to be traded, they’re worth something. It’s just a case of “sign here Mr. Smith” and off they go to one of the many homes for the elderly that have sprung up over recent years, and either their property will be sold now or when they die and the vultures get their share. Its disgusting. Where did we go so wrong?

@ Rodrigo. This public sector worker earns €300 pw more than private sector needs to be put into context. The public sector tends to employ & pay mainly highly skilled professions such a medics, professors, scientists etc. Even Gardai, nurses, teachers & firemen are highly trained professions. I would argue such high levels of expertise will attract higher pay. The private sector of course employs many of these professions too, however the private sector also contains thousands of low and semi-skilled workers who naturally are on lower pay. This in turn reflects the average difference in pay between the public & private sector.

Nope, it doesn’t, it proves we are run by the unions…why o why can we not decrease wages instead of hearing from the unions that the HSE is closing beds…we wouldn’t be closing beds if the unions got with the times we are living in…

Only the important ones ICTU,Government ,Bankers,Developers the rest of us are surplus to requirement except to pay Taxes and vote

@ ghandi, that’s bullshite, why are workers in the HSE paid more than their counterpart overseas? Unions…how hard is that to see?

Oh dear Rusty did you rise to my bait. Your response says it all and confirms precisely what I have said. There is no give and take in your world. You only understand take. Our Healthcare System is out of control. Hospital porters are more in charge and have more control that Chief Executives and change of the smallest shape only comes after years of debate and brinkmanship. All hours worked must be paid for you say so on the dot of five or six or whatever you down tools or demand more money. Isn’t that what’s wrong in your world…it’s not about anything other than your contractual rights. That’s sick and pathetic in a situation where your employer is bankrupt and lurches from this weeks pay check to the next so to speak on the good will of our neighbours. Regardless you say no and exemplify all that is rotten in this selfishly driven system which you apparently inhabit.
Do you sleep nights…you shouldn’t.

Mick
You will discover give and take when you or yours is reliant on the same people who you perceive as lazy sick day takers. Do you really think nurses dont work more than the hours allotted us?
You obviously know very little about the reality of hospitals and should get off your high horse.
You
Are
Wrong

There is no give and take required here, the job needs to be done in the way other countries do it…for the cost other countries do it for. That means reducing wage bill and reducing sick time to other countries… I can’t see any reason not to..

If he cuts the cost of the system by 100s of millions, hopefully a billion or two and improves the service then people should have no qualms about him getting 30k extra…let’s hope he makes whole sale changes and forgets about the unions…patients should be first and foremost on people minds, not the wages of the people working there once they are fair and relative to the wages in other countries

Where do they get these blokes from? He’s only in the job for a year or two so as to build up his pension. The man has a serious attitude problem. Hand picked by The government to do as they tell him. The obvious solution is staring them in the face! I mean why was it necessary to do this Croke park deal in the first place? Private sector workers were never afforded the same luxury. I hear public servants on here complaining that they’ve taken a 10% wage cut + paying more in pension contributions! Big effing deal. Hundreds of thousand private sector workers have seen their wages slashed by as much as 40%. Thousands more have lost their jobs completely. And as for pension contributions, half of them will be lucky to get a pension at all. Public servants are earning on average €300 per week more than private sector workers! Throw in the fact that they can retire earlier with a guaranteed pension, that in lots of cases, they contributed very little to, and you might begin to see why this crazy deal can no longer be justified. Bertie Ahern, Unions and benchmarking ruined Ireland. I and many others within the private sector have taken hits to the extent that there’s nothing left to hit, now it’s time for public servants to put their shoulder to the wheel.

They are paid better than in equivalent country’s…everything has to be relative…stop making excuses…the job needs to be done…

Mick, you clearly are not living on the average public sector wage…It’s not the nurses, teachers and gardai who should have their salaries cut. Most of them are barely scraping by already. Do we really need those people feeling less of an incentive to do their jobs?

Let’s make another sweeping statement……..Public Service salaries are fifty per cent higher than the private sector!
Let’s go for Benchmark Two……..tomorrow morning!

Again, we need to be relative to other countries in the same position as us, any other way does not work, it’s simple economics…I’m not saying close down beds before ye jump on my back, I’m saying we pay the same as other countries to us…then we need not cut medicines or help for the needy

As a frontline ps worker I’d have no issue in taking a further paycut to save money/Ireland. However, I like thousands of others took out a mortgage between 2005-2008. We borrowed in good faith that our salaries and cost of living payrises were fixed going forward towards 2016. We are now struggling to repay boomtime mortgages on 2001 salaries. Anymore paycuts will force thousands more to default and the banks will in return tap the taxpayer again. The ps unions should agree to paycuts only if the banks are forced to park a portion of boomtime mortgages for average Joe & Joan Citizen.

More managers is the last thing the HSE needs. If there are more than 100 non-frontline staff in the whole of the HSE then there’s too many. Give the middle management (bloat) two options if you have a medical qualification, put it good use helping patients, otherwise fire them.

I’m confused @Paddy O’Reilly are you saying there is a 13 billion dollar business on the planet of even wildly more simplistic and efficent means that is run by 100 clerical staff? Are you honestly suggesting that?

http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Publications/corporate/nspexecutivesummary2012.pdf

Stupid comment.

Seriously?

Erm with respect I think any reasonable person can grasp that the extent of the problems of the health service and the country don’t change if the currency is different , if we spend 56bn running the country and generate 30bn in tax etc , it doesn’t matter if it’s euro punts or dollars , we still have a major problem

Are you joking about nurses being married to farmers? Surely most nurses live and work in the capital and I don’t see too many farms in Dublin these days…

every nurse I know is married to some one with plenty of cash.

How many do you know McNamees? I know quite a few and none are married to farmers, I think that’s a bit of a stereotype, like Cavan people having a reputation for being tight.

Not sure about every nurse being married to a farmer…I’m going out with one…must ask her about previous marriages… But I agree with ur other points!

Andrea: North County Dublin is known as the “breadbasket of Ireland” due to the high concentration of farm produce produced there, Lettuce from Lusk, Cabbage from Clonsealy, Sage from Swords and Tomatoes from Rush. Also, there are plenty of hospitals outside of Dublin too.

So what are you saying David?
Nurses should not get paid reasonably because theyre married to people with cash?
What a stupid thing to say –
Cant wait till you get sick and there’s nobody to look after you