HEALTH SERVICE: Clerical and administration staff in the health service are upset and demoralised at being constantly referred to as the "faceless bureaucrats" on which much of the health budget is wasted, a conference heard yesterday.
Members of IMPACT, which represents 25,000 health workers including many in administration, expressed frustration at their biennial health and welfare divisional conference at what they termed were "cheap shots" at them when others were looking for someone to blame for the crisis in the health sector.
Speaking in Tullamore, Co Offaly, Ms Bernie Walsh, who works in customer services with the North Western Health Board, acknowledged that the numbers of staff in administration had risen in recent years but she said this was mainly in response to demands from consultants, nurses and other health professionals.
Nonetheless, she claimed less than 7 per cent of all health staff - 6,287 people out of a total health service staff of 92,996 - were performing non-front line roles. The others were mainly working to support front line staff as secretaries, in medical records, in reception and other similar roles, she said.
"No other health worker can do their work without the support of clerical, administrative and managerial staff. The service depends on them," she said.
She added that morale was low among colleagues who felt they were constantly under attack.
Ms Rita Moran, an employee of the North Eastern Health Board, said people seemed to think people like her "had a cushy number, sitting in plush offices reading newspapers" but she said this was far from reality.
With staff on maternity or other leave not being replaced, they were exceptionally busy and if people like her weren't doing their jobs the health service would be on its knees, she claimed. IMPACT national secretary, Mr Kevin Callinan, said his members had been attacked by representatives of other health workers who had "taken the easy, and erroneous route of blaming all the shortcomings of the system on the small group of administrative and managerial staff".
"Its just an easy cop-out for other people to take that view. Every single medical and nursing organisation has fought trenchantly over the last five years for additional clerical support so that people were actually free to concentrate on their core activities and then simply to argue that because that number has increased somewhat, that that's where the money is going just doesn't make any sense," he added.
"What we are saying to the other unions is come off it. The idea of just taking cheap shots at one other category of workers is a cop out".
He went on to criticise those who described the health service as "Third World". This was an insult, he said, to those struggling to provide services in the Third World and also to those who worked in the service here.
However, there was nothing fair about the current health service, he admitted, with the life or death of a patient depending on "their ability or inability to pay for treatment".
Meanwhile, Mr Dick Fitzgerald, a member of the union's executive, said most of the problems in the health sector at present stemmed from the cuts in the 1980s and the mistakes being made then were now being repeated.
"To make the mistake in the terrible economic circumstances of the 1980s was perhaps understandable.
"To repeat the mistake now when Ireland remains one of the strongest economies in Europe is short-sighted and unforgivable," he said.
He added that the Government couldn't pretend that because there had been investment in health that there was no pain from today's cuts in spending and staffing.