NURSE EARNED €95K IN OVERTIME
INMO slams staff shortages as it emerges senior medic must have worked 80 hours a week to make almost €150k
A SENIOR nurse was paid almost €95,000 in overtime last year, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.
Taking into account the salary of the clinical nurse manager, they would have earned almost €150,000.
This is almost treble the average salary of a nurse. The massive overtime sum is one of the highest amounts ever paid in nursing, and highlights the ongoing problem of understaffing in our health system.
The astonishing €94,852 extra pay was revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request by the Irish Daily Mail and related to a clinical nurse manager who works in mental health in the southwest.
It is estimated that the medic would need to have sometimes worked 70- to 80-hour weeks to achieve this extra pay. Last night, nursing representatives said there’s an ongoing demand on staff ‘to work far in excess of what is legally permissible’.
Twenty other nurses earned more than €42,000 in overtime last year, with 19 of them also
working in mental health services, the FoI shows. One received €72,893 during this period and another received €70,802.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association said there is an ‘inappropriate reliance on agency staff and overtime’ in the health system.
Managers in the position of the senior nurse who was paid the overtime of almost €95,000 earn between €48,570 and €57,421 a year depending on experience.
They can qualify for allowances of up to €2,000 extra if they work in certain roles.
Given that many nurses work 12hour shifts over three days, the extra hours could have been built up by working further 12-hour shifts on the other remaining four days of the week, health service sources said.
This would equate to working weeks of 70 to 80 hours.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association said last night: ‘We have repeatedly and consistently highlighted the over-reliance on overtime and agency nurses within the mental health services and the consequent implications of this on the mental health budget.
‘The PNA raised the issue of the use and cost of agency staff in its
‘A sticking-plaster solution’
submission to the Public Service Pay Commission in May. It believes unless issues of recruitment and retention of nurses into the mental services are addressed there will continue to be an inappropriate reliance on agency staff and overtime to meet staffing shortages in services throughout the country.’
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said it is clear that frontline health workers are being required to work far too long.
It said: ‘Excessive overtime is a symptom of a wildly understaffed health service.
‘People are being compelled to work far in excess of what is legally permissible. Reliance on overtime is a sticking-plaster solution.
‘Until more nurses can be attracted into the profession, the health service will continue to run short. A basic pay rise for nurses would attract more candidates, end understaffing and ensure that excessive overtime would no longer be necessary.’
The HSE said last night that it has not been able to attract as many nurses as is required to its mental health services ‘despite numerous attempts’.
‘The national workforce plan and the Mental Health Services workforce plan has identified this and further work needs to take place to examine the current challenges to recruitment and retention of mental health nursing,’ it said.
‘Overtime is used as necessary to protect frontline services to patients, to provide for consistency of care and to avoid service disruption.’
It added that retaining nursing staff has also proved challenging – as many nurses are taking up jobs abroad, and that it has run a number of recruitment drives aimed at remedying this.
Last year, the Mail revealed that one junior doctor was paid more than €125,000 in overtime in 2016 – which was double their €60,000 basic pay and brought the total to a staggering €185,000.
Six others also earned more than €90,000 on top of their basic pay.
The overall overtime bill for frontline staff such as doctors and nurses was €98.5million in 2016.
Despite the huge overtime payments, the HSE said compliance with the European Working Time Directive is regularly monitored. This directive stipulates that no employee should work more than 48 hours in any working week.
‘The National Mental Health Services has not received any notification of a breach to this piece of legislation in nursing,’ it said.