The truth about the HSE

by planetparker

Speakers at the recent hospital consultants’ conference in Limerick have revealed what most people knew for ages: the HSE is but one more example of a costly administrative balls up which may have seemed a good idea at the time but has ended up being an expensive white elephant.

 In effect, the HSER brought together all of the existing Health Boards and amalgamated them in one behemoth. All of the bad elements in the old health boards were retained of course. So the HSE contains all of the old incompetence, inefficiency and rudeness. The culture of its clerical staff – the important people you know – is that work is a four-letter word describing a distressing activity which sometimes breaks out between tea breaks – that’s if they have actually come into work at all, and haven’t found some excuse for taking a “sicky”. The “enemy” remains “The Public”, that vast amorphous crowd of wingers and complainers whose raison d’etre is to prevent health board officials from making their undisturbed way through the day till knocking-off time. Naturally, the public must be treated with disrespect and disdain.

 We have also learned that the amalgamation of health boards into the HSE did not lead to any job reductions. In fact, according to anecdotal evidence, the numbers employed by some branches of the HSE continues to rise. While there may be a recruitment moratorium in force, “at national level” some relatives of local politicians continue to be taken on as “temporary” staff, and like all things temporary they become permanent in the fullness of time.

 It goes without saying that I am not referring here to those in “frontline” services who actually deal with people and who must put up with the bullying of the HSE’s bloated administrative and managerial staff. The vast majority of front-liners believe that they have a duty to place their skills at the service of the public, whereas the latter group have one duty and that is to themselves. The managerial cohort believes that they also owe an absurd duty to a group of selfish, super-rich and super-healthy people who if they ever get sick will never have to rub shoulders or clink bedpans with the great unwashed. 

 As I joked to a man who was forced to take early retirement because he just couldn’t stand the way in which his attempts to provide something like a service within an ever more oppressive environment. “You know the great thing about the HSE? Add the letters I and T to the initials and you get SHITE.”