Harney urges public servants to accept deal

Health Minister Mary Harney has said she hopes every single public servant will think carefully about the agreement on pay and reform reached between their union representatives and the Government.

She said she believes the majority of public servants, if they think carefully, will realise that there is no alternative to the deal.

The Minister, speaking to reporters at the launch of a new Mater Hospital rapid injury clinic at Smithfield in Dublin, said later this year it is hoped that growth will return to the Irish economy but between now and 2014 the country was going to go through a very challenging and difficult period.

She said she hoped that public servants would be in a position to ratify the deal, although obviously not everybody would be in that position.

The executives of five public sector unions to date have decided not to endorse or to recommend rejection of  the new agreement. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), which has 40,000 members, is to announce tomorrow what decision its executive has taken on the deal.

SIPTU's health division endorsed the agreement last week.

The public sector unions are expected to ballot their members on the deal in the coming weeks.

Ms Harney also said the HSE had not yet identified a successor as HSE CEO to Prof Brendan Drumm. She said when the HSE board did so they would notify here and she hoped that that would happen pretty quickly.

The Minister said the Government was preparing a situation whereby from 2012 all acute hospitals will have to be licensed in order to provide services.

She said this was long overdue and very appropriate.

The Minister said the Fair Deal scheme for the funding of long-term care would have a positive impact on moving delayed discharge patients in acute hospital beds to more appropriate care settings.

She said as there was an issue where patients had diminished responsibility, many of the arrangements under Fair Deal had to be confirmed in the courts in order to protect the rights and interests of patients, and this caused some initial delays with the scheme.

The Minister said the HSE had received over 9,000 applications under the scheme and 6,000 had now been approved or were in the process of being approved.

She said once the HSE dealt with the backlog, mainly relating to people who are currently in nursing homes, it should be able to deal in a very speedy fashion with ongoing applications.

[Posted: Mon 12/04/2010]