ONLY A few hundred formal applications have so far been lodged by Health Service Executive staff wishing to leave the organisation under its recently announced voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes, unions were told yesterday.
While more than 8,500 staff have expressed an interest in the schemes, which aim to reduce the number of HSE employees by up to 5,000, the number of actual applications submitted to date is significantly lower. But there is expected to be a rush of applications this week as the deadline for applications is Friday.
While the HSE would not say how many applications had been lodged, unions meeting the executive at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) yesterday to discuss the possible fallout from the departure of large numbers of staff were told the number so far was in the “hundreds” rather than the thousands.
Staff opting to leave the HSE under the schemes must have done so by the end of the year.
Bernard Harbor of the Impact trade union said he had hoped the HSE would present unions with a plan for how it was going to cope after staff leave the organisation but it explained it was unable to do this until it knew exactly how many people were leaving.
Both sides will meet at the LRC again on Thursday week.
Mr Harbor said the fact that people leaving the HSE had to go by the end of December left very little time “to ensure people are where they need to be to ensure there is no impact on services”.
The HSE confirmed last night it had met again with Impact and the other trade unions representing staff at the LRC to discuss issues arising from the voluntary exit schemes. “These discussions are aimed at addressing potential gaps which may emerge as staff leave the services. The HSE is seeking to address the issues arising with the relevant trade unions under the parameters of the Croke Park agreement. It is expected that further talks involving all the parties will take place in the coming days,” it said.
Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil last week that management and administrative staff accounted for more than 5,300 of the 8,500 expressions of interest in the schemes. She said applications from these employees would be prioritised over those from support staff and would automatically be approved subject to the €400 million set aside for the scheme not being breached.
The voluntary redundancy scheme will involve a severance payment of three weeks’ pay per year of service in addition to statutory entitlements, subject to an overall limit of two years’ pay.
The voluntary early retirement scheme, open to employees over 50 years, provides for immediate payment of pension entitlements with no actuarial reduction in respect of payment prior to minimum retirement age.
Full lump-sum entitlement will also be paid and will not take into account recent salary cuts.