PAYROLL ISSUES AT St Vincent’s Hospital in Fairview, Dublin have left people short ‘hundreds’ of euros in wages, as the hospital executive repeats past mistakes.

Some staff haven’t been paid for overtime worked in September, and many haven’t received their full base rate of pay for the month. 

At a meeting with hospital executives last night over Zoom, a disgruntled union warned acting-CEO Eoin Culliton that further action may be taken. The union says that the errors breach the Payment of Wages Act.

The Journal understands that staff were assured the problems would be resolved by 18 October, three weeks after their last payday.

One staff member told The Journal that there is currently no dedicated payroll employee, as one employee left and their replacement has not yet started. In the interim, human resources and the executive staff have been handling wages at the psychiatric hospital. 

“Lots of people weren’t paid overtime properly. People weren’t paid their normal rates properly. Some people weren’t paid for their nights,” she said, adding that staff were told before payday to check the amount they receive and inform human resources what they are owed.

She said few have received the outstanding wages in the weeks since.

“We’re angry because we work so hard … We probably feel we already don’t get paid appropriately for what we do.

“We’re working off agency staff, which I’d say most of the hospitals in Dublin are working off because our cost of living in Dublin is so high that most of the people that we know are moving.

“We’re already struggling with the cost of living in Dublin, we’re already struggling at work with the lack of numbers of regular staff … To have this on top just brings morale right down in the hospital, which is already low anyway.”

St Vincent’s Hospital has not responded to requests for comment.

In a statement, the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) said the errors in overtime payments were many, “given the nature of the staffing demands in St Vincent’s”.

“This situation has caused considerable concern and difficulty to staff in meeting financial commitments – mortgages , standing orders, repayments etc.

“The PNA are extremely concerned that this situation has arisen again. It should not have happened again.”

The union, which says it has “lost confidence” in the hospital executive, called for a review of the payroll system and demanded that all money owed be paid in the meantime.

The same issues arose last year and the PNA asked Culliton to improve communication going forward. “He assured us that he would and he hasn’t,” the staff member said.

This was acknowledged by the executive at Thursday night’s meeting.

Culliton agreed to provide staff with explanations on how to read payslips, but did not say how this will happen.