MORE THAN 24,000 IN MANAGER ROLES
LATEST figures show there are now more managers within the health service than there are health and social care professionals.
Responses from the HSE to parliamentary queries from Fine Gael spokesman Colm Burke reveal there are 24,279 management and administrative staff members employed in the health service. This compares to 13,076 medical and dental staff, comprising 3,980 consultants, 4,301 registrars, 3,658 SHOs/interns and 1,137 categorised as ‘other’. There are 21,865 health and social care professionals, including 6,938 therapy professionals, 5,473 employed in health science/ diagnostics, 3,658 in social care, 1,476 social workers, 1,246 psychologists, 1,436 in pharmacy,
and a further 1,638 categorised as ‘other’. A spokesman for the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said: ‘We have a chronic recruitment and retention crisis that is not being addressed urgently enough. This is evident from the fact that 838 approved consultant posts nationally are either absolutely vacant or filled on a temporary or agency basis.
‘It is imperative these vacant consultant posts are filled if we are to effectively address the record hospital waiting lists, which now include more than 100,000 children for the first time.
‘The Government must appoint a replacement independent chair immediately with the representative organisations to kick-start the stalled hospital consultant contract talks,’ the spokesman added.