The job cut figures produced by the Western Health Board are puzzling - but they highlight the fact that people will lose their jobs in the health services this year, writes Padraig O'Morain, Health Correspondent
This week's row over job cuts has produced an unexpected autumn storm for the Minister for Health, Mr Martin.
It may also turn into a storm for the Western Health Board (WHB). It has so far failed to detail how the spending cuts sought by the Department of Health and Children, which the Department says amounts to the non-filling of 85 posts, translate into the 200 jobs its chief executive officer, Dr Sheelah Ryan, says must go. The board has also managed to enrage the unions representing the 200 workers whose jobs are at risk.
The explanation for the disagreement over figures may lie in the fact that there are two distinct strands of spending cuts going on in the WHB and in many other health boards.
The first was underway before the Government announced in July that it wanted health boards to halt the filling of 800 posts which had been sanctioned.
That strand of cuts arose from overspending by the health boards in the early months of the year. A significant contributor to that overspending was the winter vomiting virus which meant, among other things, that private and semi-private rooms which would have been occupied by paying private patients were instead being used as isolation rooms for victims of the virus. That loss of private income cost the Southern Health Board about €1 million, for instance.
Health boards, hospitals and other agencies may also have recruited more staff in 2001 than had been sanctioned by the Department. It was, after all, a period of expansion - remember that golden era? - and it was a reasonable bet that the funding would come through in some shape or other this year.
The WHB was very open about all this, warning that savings would have to be found and that it wanted to talk to the unions about ways in which this could be done with the least upset to service delivery. The exercise in working out how to get back within budget after the cost overruns of the early part of the year was underway in a number of health boards before the General Election.
Then came the second strand of cutbacks. This was announced in July as part of a Government strategy to address the general budget.
It was a very unwelcome development for health boards, such as the WHB, which were already looking for savings in spending. The Minister assured everyone that what he was looking for was the non-filling of 800 jobs which had been sanctioned but to which nobody had yet been appointed.
Dr Ryan set off a storm this week when she stated that the financial savings being sought by the Department amounted to 200 jobs and not the 85 which had been indicated to the WHB in July. The Department insists the savings it sought - €1.15 million for the second half of the year - amounts to 85 jobs and no more.
On the Department's figures, the salary for each of these jobs would be about €27,000 per annum which is realistic.
On the WHB's figures the salary (i.e. €1.15 million representing 200 salaries) for each job would be about €11,000 per annum which would not be realistic at all unless the WHB is talking about part-time posts e.g. clerical staff working mornings or afternoons only at the bottom of the pay scale.
Another explanation is that the WHB employed over 300 more people than had been sanctioned for last year - and sources suggest this is so - and now has to let 200 of them go.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this week's controversy, the tightening in Government spending means that some real, currently-filled jobs in the health services will be lost this year. We don't know how many and it is doubtful if anybody will tell us until after the event.
It is likely that only 800 - some of them jobs that have never been filled - will go under the cutbacks announced in July and that the others - many of them filled on temporary contracts - will go under a different process.
This will be no consolation at all to the people who will lost their jobs or to patients who will suffer a deterioration in services.