Pay in the health service - 2/3's of budget

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shnaek

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I was just reading that in the Business Post that:

"Thanks to generous benchmarking awards over the past few years, pension costs and overtime, pay now takes up more than two-thirds of the overall health budget."

and that:

"In most of the major Dublin hospitals, pay costs account for between 75 and 80 per cent of the overall budget."

This is surely unsustainable. Crazy in fact. I don't envy Mary Harney trying to sort that out. Does anyone know how that compares to health budget division in other EU countries?
 
shnaek said:
I was just reading that in the Business Post that:

"Thanks to generous benchmarking awards over the past few years, pension costs and overtime, pay now takes up more than two-thirds of the overall health budget."

and that:

"In most of the major Dublin hospitals, pay costs account for between 75 and 80 per cent of the overall budget."

This is surely unsustainable. Crazy in fact. I don't envy Mary Harney trying to sort that out. Does anyone know how that compares to health budget division in other EU countries?
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How dare you knock Benchmarking! It is the best thing that ever happened to this country. Why would you have a problem with people with defined benefit pensions, long holidays, great perks and near total job security as a given being "Benchmarked" against workers with some or none of the above by a bunch of politically appointed and politically motivated insiders? It's not as if it was done in secret with no defined matrix, and it's not as if the country can't afford it...oh yea, well that doesn't matter, it's still great.

Just to cheer you up even more, more than 2/3 of all the increases in spending in the health service have gone on pay rises. The INO made sure they were looked after before they started a picket to highlight the so-called crisis in A&E.
As least we have the national pension reserve fund to cover the increased cost of pensions in the public sector. I wonder what the cost of funding the pension increases in the health service is? That should be added into the figures for health spending.
 
Purple said:
How dare you knock Benchmarking! It is the best thing that ever happened to this country.
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I wouldn't dare knock it! I am so happy with it I think we in the private sector should abandon our jobs and join the public sector.

Seriously though - if any minister for health sorts out our health system they deserve an award. I can't see how it can be done with this level of spending going on wages for those in protected jobs.
 
John O'Shea of Goal said that the only organisation that could sort out the problems of Africa is the US Marines. I think the same sort of thing applies here.
There are about 2 million people working in Ireland. One in twenty of them work in the health service. That's the statistic that astounds me.
 
Purple said:
There are about 2 million people working in Ireland. One in twenty of them work in the health service. That's the statistic that astounds me.
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You would think we'd have one of the best systems in the world with a stat like that. But as it is we have 1 in 20 people working for one of the worst health systems in Europe. You could try to ignore that but for the fact that health is the most important thing for any of us.
 
shnaek said:
You would think we'd have one of the best systems in the world with a stat like that. But as it is we have 1 in 20 people working for one of the worst health systems in Europe. You could try to ignore that but for the fact that health is the most important thing for any of us.
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The solution is more people and more money, isn't that obvious?:rolleyes:
 
the nurses main grevience is that care workers in hospitals ( who are junior to nurses.dont have the same responsibilites, and didn't have to study for a degree) earn more than they do and when they said they wanted this situation sorted were informed that the next benchmarking would sort it out. we get what we deserve from a government with that attitude.
 
cuchulainn said:
the nurses main grevience is that care workers in hospitals ( who are junior to nurses.dont have the same responsibilites, and didn't have to study for a degree) earn more than they do and when they said they wanted this situation sorted were informed that the next benchmarking would sort it out. we get what we deserve from a government with that attitude.
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I don't think the government has the attitude problem. Clearly the problem is the unions. I'm sick and tired of listening to the nurses grievances. Both doctors and nurses have refused to agree to reform the health service. As far as they are concerned every change they make deserves some sort of pay rise. This seems ridiculous when you consider that is the poor work practices of health care staff and managment that is responsible for the state of the health care staff. Unfortunately I've had to spend too much time in recent years in Irish hospitals with family members - two of whom were left waiting for days on trolleys. What shocked me was the amount of breaks nurses take. Many of them seem to spend loads of time standing around having chats with eachother with a total disregard for the patients' needs. In fairness you can't really blame them for that because this lazy culture is something far too commonplace with the public services but I think Mary Harney has the right attitude now in trying to bring about serious reform and I think its about time that the unions realised that they can't use bullying tactics to keep demanding more money unless they start to improve the way in which they work. From spending some time in a private hospital recently, there is no comparison between workers in the private hospitals and those in the public hospitals. The staff in the private hospitals work far harder and show a far greater respect for the patient. So maybe the solution to cutting down on wages is to utilise the private sector more, considering that it is generally more efficient anyway. Of course the unions attempt to call this 'privatisation' when in fact it is clearly not that at all. In fact it may go some way to ending the two-tier health system.
 
shnaek said:
I was just reading that in the Business Post that:

"In most of the major Dublin hospitals, pay costs account for between 75 and 80 per cent of the overall budget."

This is surely unsustainable. Crazy in fact. I don't envy Mary Harney trying to sort that out. Does anyone know how that compares to health budget division in other EU countries?
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of the 957 million given to the department of defence, 700 million is for pay and pensions, seems to be a government thing....
 
Didnt Fine Gael promise to get our public sector working properly and get good value from them before a recent election? I think they said they were going to cut jobs in the public sector also.
They got mauled in that election.
 
We need a reduction in the percentage of the labour force in the state sector and new recruits should be hired on private sector terms.
 
I work for the health board. If you just made it so you could fire people who don't do their job there would be no problem full stop. That's it in a nutshell. I can ring someone with a simple admin problem in the hb and get a simple 'I don't know' for an answer. Not 'I don't know, I'll find out' or 'try this person'. just ' I don't know and I don't give a flying ..'.
The person who will go to the ends of the earth for you gets paid the exact same as the person who sits on their This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language counting the days till they retire.
 
Nice to see some honesty on this issue from someone in the state sector. The private sector would force those
people to be more productive.
 
GeneralZod said:
We need a reduction in the percentage of the labour force in the state sector and new recruits should be hired on private sector terms.
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No i dont think so, private sector sucks,

Unions, pay deals, social partner ship. Would go to public sector tomorrow if could get something without moving to dublin
 
The unions are the reason the incompetants can't be fired. They should take responsibility, but they won't. They have France and Germany ruined, and they will ruin this country too by the end of this round of benchmarking. In the past they did a fine job protecting workers rights. Now they protect their own interests to the detriment of the majority of hard working Irish people. Soon we'll have a health budget where 100% goes on wages. What will we do then?!

Fair play to Moneygrower. I have friends who work hard in the public service and they are sick about the way things work. They see others getting equally rewarded for sitting on their asses and doing nothing. It is bad for morale. We are going to be in the same shambolic state until the unions grow up and start working for the benefit of those who work hard.

Pity our government is a lapdog to the mobilised minority instead of the hard working majority.
 
Having worked in both the public and private sectors, I find the differences less stark than one might think from reading this thread. There are people on both sides of the fence who should have been fired years ago, but aren't - for whatever reason. There are people who get rewarded for great work, and people who work hard for few rewards on both sides. The vast majority of people I encountered are dilligent, serious, enthusiastic and do the best job they can within their circumstances.

The '2/3rds' point of the OP is meaningless with international or historical comparisons.
 
RainyDay said:
Having worked in both the public and private sectors, I find the differences less stark than one might think from reading this thread. There are people on both sides of the fence who should have been fired years ago, but aren't - for whatever reason. There are people who get rewarded for great work, and people who work hard for few rewards on both sides. The vast majority of people I encountered are dilligent, serious, enthusiastic and do the best job they can within their circumstances.
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The crucial point though is that the costs of inefficiency in the private sector are incurred by shareholders who are free to sell their stake, in the public sector the equivalent costs are incurred by taxpayers who don't have the same option. While inefficiency undoubtedly exists in the private sector it is a far greater problem in the public sector primarily because of the absence of incentive: you generally get the same rewards no matter how well or poorly you do your job. Public sector organisations also tend to have more layers of management than in the private sector, an obvious problem in the health system.

This year the government will spend almost €13bn on health, over €3000 for every person in the state. If hospitals were privately owned and the government subsidised health insurance to the tune of €1000 on average for every citizen for example, the savings to the exchequer would be over €8bn per annum.
 
This year the government will spend almost €13bn on health, over €3000 for every person in the state.
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Add to that the money spent on private healthcare...
 
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