What does the Secretary General of the health department do all day, anyway?

Loads of information for you here;

and here's the job spec.

I'm fairly sure Paul Reid's role was publicly advertised at the time. Why didn't you apply?

I'd guess that understanding the difference between the role of the Department and the role of the HSE would probably be a prerequisite to taking up a leadership post on either side. So that rules your good self out.

His salary is what it is...its the pay increase that is involved....awful amount for a pay increase.

And still hasn't by all accounts, absolute spoofer

The increase would probably pay for 1 FTE nurse, once training and materials ate considered. Its trivial compared to the health budget. And 50% will be paid back in tax.

420k for Paul Reid? Really? To read out stats and repeat what NPHET said for months? To flunk the contact tracing system and produce 'guidance' on the hse website that is beyond belief and contradictory.

Myself, my kids primary school office and a neighbour all rang the hse helpline on a query to do with primary school kids, positive cases in a home and isolating, and we got 3 different answers. Same old hse.

I went to a 'leadership' conference Reid was speaking at years ago. He was highlighting his private sector (telecom eireann monopoly) experience and how he'd change the public sector. Must have been ten years ago....I'd love to hear what he actually delivered in changes cos the health system is as bad as ever. Total Jack Pallancer from what I can see.

The question you should be asking is what metrics is he scored on because he absolutely has targets and objectives. If you know what they are, whether they are appropriate and whether he is achieving/exceeding them you might be on to something.

I suppose the issue comes from the fact that the head of NHS earns about half what Paul Reid does. That is a much larger organisation in a country with much higher paid executives in private industry.

Do we have any indication that consulting firms are head hunting the CEOs of county councils at that sort of salary range? I would be very surprised if that was the case. I think we would all like to know how we got to the point where the answer to the issues in the HSE, with a spend of 20bn a year, is the CEO of Fingal county council? Maybe the salary is reasonable for the right person, but it seems we always hire people who are on the upper PS/state board/quango merry go round, the Angela Kerrin's of the Irish Labor market. Maybe part of the hiring process is making sure the person "knows how things work in the PS" or "knows not to upset the apple cart"?

We have been doing it this way for a long time and the state fails miserably at anything that involves providing a service in a reasonable time frame to end users. When you finally get an appointment in a hospital, you often end up arriving at a "clinic", take a ticket and you realise that 50 other people also had a 9:30 am appointment. Do you ever go to a private dentist at 9:30 and find that 50 people are there already waiting with their tickets? No, of course not, because you wouldn't accept that if you were paying for it directly.

The SG is the Accounting Officer for the Dept, so he is responsible to the Oireachtas for every cent spent. Yes, DPER sets overall salary policy, but Dept Health would lead on major sectoral issues, like the GP contract and the consultant contract. They would have substantial input into overall salary policy and negotiations for nurses’ salaries and more.

Again, I’ve no idea why you’re comparing against such different roles in the private sector. The Dept is responsible for the largest employer in the country and hundreds of thousands of indirectly employed staff. They are the lead on Covid response (CMO, NPHET, NIAC), on healthcare, social care, disability services, rehab services and lots, lots more. It really doesn’t compare well to making widgets or selling phones.

Having said that, the salary increase just for Watt is indefensible. Everyone in Health should be banging on the door for a corresponding increase.

Watt previously worked in Department of Public Expenditure.

Before moving to his current role in Department of Health, he approved a salary increase for the role in Department of Health, which he would later move to. He effectively set his own salary, then jumped to that new job. Snouts in the trough doesnt even begin to describe it.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-40736856.html

What really sticks in my craw with the remuneration the upper levels of the public service receive is the pensions; they should be limited to the average wage of people in the private sector, if you don't think that's enough to live on in retirement then either contribute to a private pension yourself or come up with ways to improve the average wage of private workers.

Do people in this thread realise Ryan Tubridy is on 500k...

Thats where your anger should be....