Paying over the odds in the HSE

by planetparker

Last week’s Irish edition of the Sunday Times (October 26th) told how the Health Service Executive have discovered that they have overpaid some of their staff by about 5 million euro and how they are endeavouring to claw this back. The article also disclosed that the difficulties encountered by HSE management in realising just who got what, and who was overpaid, are compounded by the existence of no less then ten separate payroll systems in the organisation. Once somebody goes from one payroll environment to the next, they effectively die. The HSE has written to those whom they suspect of having been overpaid, requesting them to pay back the surplus. The response has been well, disappointing to say the least, so they are faced with having to hire external solicitors (at eye-watering cost) to try and pursue the overpaid millions.

 What type of a setup i.e. mess are they operating? I know the experience of many people in the HSE who work in the front line f the provision of services. The HSE’s accounting year rungs from the end of March of one year to the equivalent date in the following. Staff members who have outstanding holiday entitlements are faced with a stark choice: use them or lose them. These entitlements cannot be carried forward. Why? Because that‘s the message from the top, and that’s the way it is, has always been, and always will be – period. Occasionally these entitlements have been run up because HSE executives have been compelled to work beyond their contracts maybe at the behest of HSE management, or in order to try and provide something equivalent to a service.  But as at least one HSE employee has told me. “Ya might as well be idle. If you give 150 per cent to the job you are treated the same as if you only gave 50 per cent. The HSE doesn’t give a … (expletives deleted). So each March many providers of front line services in the HSE are compelled to absent themselves, and naturally they are not replaced and they don’t receive any cover. This causes untold hardship to hundreds if not thousands of people.

 The answer to this? Change the system so as to allow people to bring their holiday entitlements forward from one year to the next. It wouldn’t cost anything and couldn’t add to the deficit. But it would challenge the mentality of the HSE which is apparently deep-frozen/

 The fact is such management wouldn’t be able to manage a public lavatory for dogs. They are a disgrace, but yet in the anticipated round of health payment cuts you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be safe.

The fact that the Irish health service is in such a mess rests fairly and squarely in the hands of those who administer and manage it. We can blame the politicians – and believe me, they have a lot to answer for, not least the current minister – but we can change the government tomorrow morning and the mess would stay the same, as those in charge remain, just that, in charge, come what may: winter, spring, summer or fall. And their reaction to the suffering which results from this blinkered thinking? “Ah sure, they should b in the VHI.”