Savage Health Cuts announced today ( friday)

Sponge Bob

The HSE is briefing all TDs Senators and councillors on their committees in the west on the cutbacks right now. I think Roscommon hospital is closing this month from what I was told. The meeting is still ongoing and the ructions should start any minute.

HSE agreed €45m of savings with the unions but they need to take another €45m of expenditure out of the system BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER. This is what they are briefing the TD s and senators on. Watch their tweets if you can. Mary Harney is invisible, probably not even in the country.

Thats nearly €1m of health spending to be cut every day in the West in the rest 2010.

And that itself is more millions out of the Galway City economy this year.

Head The Wall

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The HSE is briefing all TDs Senators and councillors on their committees in the west on the cutbacks right now. I think Roscommon hospital is closing this month from what I was told. The meeting is still ongoing and the ructions should start any minute.

HSE agreed €45m of savings with the unions but they need to take another €45m of expenditure out of the system BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER. This is what they are briefing the TD s and senators on. Watch their tweets if you can. Mary Harney is invisible, probably not even in the country.

Thats nearly €1m of health spending to be cut every day in the West in the rest 2010.

And that itself is more millions out of the Galway City economy this year.

Any mention of what happens all the staff that can't be sacked

Galway city and county represent about 5% of the population of the republic of Ireland.

So far this year the Exchequer current account deficit is about €10,500,000,000.00 so Galway's part of that on a simple per capita basis is about €575,000,000.00

There will be many more cuts to come.

snubbleste

Where are these savage cuts?

In other news..
Consultants, nurses, patients and supporters will march from Merlin Park Hospital to Eyre Square at ten o' clock tomorrow morning. There is concern that services and wards at UHG and Merlin Park will close as a result of the HSE West's cost cutting plan.

Head The Wall

All these services will be cut but the people that provide them can't be fired, what do they then spend their days at?

thelongfellow

Head The Wall wrote: »

All these services will be cut but the people that provide them can't be fired, what do they then spend their days at?

Same as they are doing at the minute. Making things as awkward as possible for their work colleagues and resisting even the most necessary change.

Curious Geroge

When the HSE brought in the Fair Deal Scheme last year to replace the subvention they applied costs to Nursing Home around the country. No Nursing Home rate was a downward cost, all were an increase. Applying that average increase seen for each resident of €128pw and working to an average number of residents in a Nursing Home of 49 residents; apply this only to the 40 nursing homes registered in Galway, the annual cost of giving away this money is over €13.5 million (for Galway only).

I simply don’t understand why a cost needed to be applied, why did they simply not agree to pay what was been asked at the time, why offer to pay more ?

Result is a huge deficit for the HSE and job loses and the ward closures looming !!

The question I have is how this topic has not being picked up by the public service who are getting caught up on decisions like this and why are we not seeing papers and radio picking this quiet obvious shambles and running with it !!

Cost of each Nursing Home
http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Find_a_Service/Older_People_Services/nhss/costprivate.pdf

Head The Wall

The public service don't care because it's not their money they are spending and the permenant ones have guaranteed jobs and no pay cuts until 2014. It's a very me,me ,me view they have on it because they seem to think money will keep falling out of the sky to pay their over inflated wages. It's a real case of paying gold bullion and getting monkeys

Mrs OBumble

Curious Geroge wrote: »

I simply don’t understand why a cost needed to be applied, why did they simply not agree to pay what was been asked at the time, why offer to pay more ?

I don't know anything about the specifics.

But I'd guess it was part of a larger-picture deal about making up for previous underfunding.

It's not like the quality of nursing home facilities in this country is particularly high: I've even seen brochures where a home claimed to respect individual patients privacy and then showed pictures of a bedroom with fours in it separated only be curtains. Privacy my a**. The very fact that the thought it was ok to publish the brochure like that is telling in itself.

McDougal

anyone going? Called by a group called Galway says no to health cuts. Just saw it in advertiser

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/31179

Dr McManus

What the health cuts really mean are job losses within the HSE.
Another name for this is restructuring, but in reality that is just another way of making people redundant. This is the only way that cuts can be made of this size in this time.
Worker pay is the single biggest cost of running the HSE, therefore if you want to make big savings quickly you reduce the size of the HSE. I don't agree with it, but that's the reality of the situation. At this time more than ever the government should be investing in the HSE, not making cuts. However the HSE is non profit making, and the government sees the banks as the future for economic growth, therefore (in their eyes) bailing out toxic banks such as Anglo Irish makes economic sense. I think the billions of Euro squandered on Anglo Irish bank would have been better spent investing in the HSE.

I don't understand what protesting the cathedral will achieve. It might say it on the website

Head The Wall

It should be "Galway says no to all HSE staff retaining their inflated salaries and because of that services have to be cut"

Make no mistake here people services are being cut because of the CP deal agreeing no paycuts or job losses even though there is at least 6,000 unnecessary staff in the HSE.

seriouslysweet

A person and a half in Galway as administration staff is ridiculous, they should have to be more transparent about what they do, my parents work in UHG and no word of a lie the administration staff are the ones draining it. Protests may not seem important but they show our dissatisfaction.

Head The Wall

If you think the HSE is underfunded well then you don't know whats going on. The problem is waste, ineptitude, inefficiency and downright greed across the whole HSE.

Contract staff are the ones being let go and not one single permenant member of staff is getting laid off. As a result of this some areas will get decimated and others will be overstaffed depending on the ratio of permenant staff to people on contracts.

All permenant lazy, thick, incompetent staff get to keep their jobs and pay levels. Hard working, diligent and efficient staff will get the boot because they are on a contract. It's genius thinking from those a5swipes in govt/HSE.

McDougal

Head The Wall wrote: »

It should be "Galway says no to all HSE staff retaining their inflated salaries and because of that services have to be cut"

Make no mistake here people services are being cut because of the CP deal agreeing no paycuts or job losses even though there is at least 6,000 unnecessary staff in the HSE.

Spare us your nonsense tory boy. Services are being cut because the government is pissing away money in the banks. The staff have already taken two pay cuts and temporary staff have been let go. The staff are off their feet if you ever go in and look.

If you want to spout your thatcherite extremism go into the political forums.

McDougal

Head The Wall wrote: »

If you think the HSE is underfunded well then you don't know whats going on. The problem is waste, ineptitude, inefficiency and downright greed across the whole HSE.

Contract staff are the ones being let go and not one single permenant member of staff is getting laid off. As a result of this some areas will get decimated and others will be overstaffed depending on the ratio of permenant staff to people on contracts.

All permenant lazy, thick, incompetent staff get to keep their jobs and pay levels. Hard working, diligent and efficient staff will get the boot because they are on a contract. It's genius thinking from those a5swipes in govt/HSE.

Put down your Sunday Independent. No one believes all that right wing crap.

PomBear

Usual Tripe, blame other people before blaming the government who are really to blame.

Mrs OBumble

And the govt are just the folks who we elected

Does anyone have any fact (as opposed to conjecture) about the numbers of support staff per clinical staff member in the HSE, vs other in government operated health systems elsewhere? Giving about about admin staff is a favourite activity all over the world - until you realise that if the admin staff weren't there, you'd have highly trained, and higher paid, clinical staff spending hours of their time doing the admin work. Claiming that the admin doesn't need to be done is also a favourite trick - until you realise that then there'd be no record of how any people were on the waiting list, no scheduling of appointment times, etc etc.

I'm not saying that the current admin systems, procedures and people are perfect. Just that they're an easy target.

And as to why the protest is at the cathedral ... 'tis to prepare us for a return to faith-healing as the most common treatment approach, of course

magentas

there's a real "us versus them" attitude when it comes to public and private sector staff

I imagine a little bit of unity and compassion would be more constructive as opposed to bitterness

We are all suffering the consequences of this recession no matter what sector we are/were:( in

Don't know why protest is being held in cathedral, just scanned through article, I assumed it was just HSE staff protesting but sounds like it's more of a general gathering

seriouslysweet

Is it confecture because I'm young? I know how many of them are in there, some work their socks off, others don't. Like many organisations. I don't think it was suggested we could do without though? The paper trail is as important in the health system as anywhere else.

snubbleste

It's at the Cathedral so they have a place to park their expensive cars for free and that they don't have far to march to UHG.
I presume the march from Merlin Park west to Eyre Square recently in a sou'westerly with heavy rain had an effect..

In other news, saw it earlier. All the local councillors (except the FFers) seemed to there and the protesters had some nice slogan festooned placards no doubt written with expensive marker pens on 100gm paper..

Head The Wall

McDougal wrote: »

Spare us your nonsense tory boy. Services are being cut because the government is pissing away money in the banks. The staff have already taken two pay cuts and temporary staff have been let go. The staff are off their feet if you ever go in and look.

If you want to spout your thatcherite extremism go into the political forums.

Less of the name calling or you'll find yourself banned again.

What the govt is spending on the banks is minuscule to the deficit we are running annually. PS staff are still getting pay rises (increments) which makes a mockery of the 1 paycut they have had.

I'd believe Colm McCarthys report about the excess staff in the HSE before your guesswork anyday of the week.

Head The Wall

I don't read the sindo. No newspaper tells me what to think.

It's a common line trotted out by PS/govt lovers that don't like hearing the truth

http://www.galwaynews.ie/15197-health-cut-protest-organisers-call-more-support
Galway news says there were only about 350 people there.