Sinn Féin spokesperson for Roscommon Claire Kerrane has said a combined total of over €8m was spent on agency staff at Portiuncula and Roscommon Hospitals last year.
She says the government and the HSE are presiding over serious financial waste.
“Figures released by the HSE to my colleague Louise O’Reilly TD have shown that every day last year the HSE spent approximately nearly €1 million on costly agency and locum doctors, nurses, and other staff in order to fill posts left vacant due to the recruitment and retention crisis.
“The overreliance on the use of costly and more expensive agency staff is a direct result of the recruitment and retention crisis and has escalated under this Fine Gael government with the total amount spent on agency staff rising from €158 million in 2011 to €293 million last year.
“Last year the State spent €105 million on agency doctors. This situation was replicated in Roscommon hospital where €2.5 million was spent on agency staff last year. This is a huge amount of money to be spent on agency staff who are more expensive than directly employed staff and it is no doubt severely depleting the health budget”.
Ms. Kerrane added: “A breakdown of the figures reveals just how significant the dependency on agency doctors was in Roscommon hospital last year. Over the course of 2017 Roscommon hospital spent almost of €1.2 million on agency doctors”.
Ms. Kerrane said that €5.8 million was spent on agency staff at Portiuncula Hospital last year.
“This is as a direct result of the crisis in the recruitment and retention of medical professionals and in particular, nurses and midwives”.
She called for nursing and midwifery numbers to be increased.
“Unfortunately, in recent years, the work and dedication of Irish nurses has been taken for granted with successive Health Ministers failing to understand or address their situation or the reasonable requests they have made for better working conditions, better facilities, more supports, increased training opportunities, and for the issue of pay to be addressed”.
