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Connolly Hospital staff stage protest against cuts

Friday, 20 June 2008

Employees and health service workers staged a protest outside Blanchardstown’s Connolly Hospital last week to highlight staffing shortages.
The protest was one of 28 similar demonstrations held at various locations around the country.
It is believed that almost 70 posts have been lost in the Northside hospital since last year.
According to staff, the shortages are having a huge effect on patients.
Doreen Bracken, physiotherapy manager at Connolly Hospital, criticised the Health Service Executive (HSE) for its handling of the issue.
“The important decisions in relation to staff and the rest of the hospital are being left in the hands of financial controllers rather than the front-line staff who have to deal with the consequences,” she told Northside People.

“From our perspective, the patients of the hospital will always be affected in situations like this.
“Each day in Connolly we have around 60 patients who need rehabilitation twice a day but very little thought has gone into how this can be adequately provided.”
According to Ms Bracken, a number of positions in her department, which were lost last year, have still not been filled.
“We were working very closely with the Government and the Department of Health to get those jobs sanctioned in the first place,” she explained. “But now the HSE is saying that those jobs didn’t exist and that the positions will not be refilled.
“At the end of the day, it is the patient that suffers. They are in need of the rehabilitation and if they don’t get it there will be bigger costs to pay when those patients need full time care before their time.”
The IMPACT trade union has been backing health service staff on the matter.
“Patients and staff are the real losers here,” IMPACT’s Phil McFadden said. “There have been over 460 jobs lost on the Northside because of HSE cutbacks and the embargo.
“We met with representatives from Connolly Hospital last week and we are fully supportive of their plight to highlight this deplorable situation.”
He added: “Connolly Hospital needs to make up for a deficit whereby it plans to close the outpatients’ department for two weeks over the summer. All of these cutbacks are part of a cost cutting exercise.”
The HSE invited IMPACT to engage in discussions in a bid to resolve the dispute, according to a spokesperson for the executive.
“There are tried and tested industrial relations mechanisms available to all parties to avail of - if people are really willing to engage in meaningful discussion about staffing in the health services,” the spokesperson stated.
According to the HSE, there has not been any embargo on recruitment in the health service.
“Since January 2008, over 3,400 posts have been approved to be filled,” it was stated. “In short, recruitment continues to happen - with a large number of important medical consultant posts approved and advertised every week.”
The spokesperson added: “It is entirely regrettable that the IMPACT trade union has carried out an escalation of its industrial action.”

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