Up to €1 Billion in extra payments to State Employees

This term 'frontline' is nonsense. What is a frontline worker? You may aswell try to reward all the 'good' workers...
The people who were most exposed were the ones working on checkouts in supermarkets. They are on much lower pay and their employers made a fortune during the lockdown. I'm sure many doctors and nurses and care assistants and Porters worked very hard through that period but numbers in A&E were very low, elective surgeries were cancelled and I'm sure there were plenty of other areas where they were their workload dropped during that time.
 
Shout it from the rooftops! GDPR (inflicted on us by our witless MEPs) has been an absolute disaster that appears to benefit only criminals and faudsters.
I'm a big fan of the GDPR but it needs to be understood properly and not used as a smokescreen for incompetence and bad practice to hide behind.
 
I'm a big fan of the GDPR but it needs to be understood properly and not used as a smokescreen for incompetence and bad practice to hide behind.

I agree with you up to a point (as a former boss of mine used to say whenever he vehemently disagreed with someone over something.)
 
The 'frontline' term was widely used in the health service prior to covid to refer to staff in patient contact roles.

Of course as soon as a reward is mooted for frontline workers, representative bodies for other public services are looking to jump on the gravy train. Why not the whole essential services list?
 
For the HSE, IMO, it is those who had to wear PPE..
What grade of PPE?

I'm deliberately being pedantic as I think this idea of singling out a specific group of workers is a minefield. I can't believe that any politician thought it was a good idea to open that can of worms. It can only be a bad news story. Those that don't 'qualify' will feel very aggrieved and a proportion of those that do 'qualify' will also be miffed at the size/nature of the reward. Lose, lose.
 
Reading some posts on hear you would think the Left and SF are the only ones to have found the Money tree,

the most dangerous people to leave in charge of the so-called money tree are in government at present, they can't wait to spend every cent they can borrow at the moment,
 
This term 'frontline' is nonsense. What is a frontline worker?

I would suggest it is those workers who keep working that is critical to maintain social cohesion. Healthcare workers, law enforcement, food producers and providers, transport workers as examples.
 
I would suggest it is those workers who keep working that is critical to maintain social cohesion. Healthcare workers, law enforcement, food producers and providers, transport workers as examples.
Refuse collection, water and sewage treatment, power generation, packaging for food, logistics administration, IT for all of the above, maintenance and repair for all of the above, mechanics, petrol station employees, homeless services, needle exchanges, drug dealers... the list goes on and on.

If it's just social cohesion then don't forget the Pub and Bookies, at least near where I work.

If all the water and sewage workers and all the bin men stopped working for a month it would kill more people than if all the doctors and nurses stopped working for a month.
 
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Be careful what you wish for.
 
'Front Line' only applies State employees. The other Front Line people don't count.
In that context;

Can we not just give them all a round of applause or something?

What if we all promised not to roll our eyes when they tell us (for the umpteenth time) how hard they worked, how brilliant they all are, how they are the best in the world and how underpaid they are?

What if we had a national "Sure aren't you great" day for them?
 
Be careful what you wish for.
I hope they don't
but it is heading in that direction, I am hoping we can turn the bus before the present crowd crashes it, not looking likely judging by posters reaction to the urge to spend every cent they can possibly borrow on our behalf,
 
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Did no political advisors warn the government that however many people you give this bonus to, there will be twice as many who feel they should have gotten it... so you're burning political capital as well as money?
 
Can we not just give them all a round of applause or something?
Some of them have already gotten a lovely medal and a form letter from the president! Now I want a medal too.... and some holidays, and cash to spend on those holidays.....I mean we were all in it together!
 
St James's isn't a HSE hospital, and it does have one of the more advanced electronic health records in the Irish public system, but it is still being rolled out, so you will still find fragmented records there across different department..

But generally the Irish publicly funded health system is 20 years behind other health systems in terms of electronic health records - paper records are still predominant. It's a necessary investment to make, and will cost well over a billion over 10 to 15 years. Unfortunately there aren't literally billions to be saved - the evidence is quite poor for economic benefits as a return on investment (no matter what the software vendors tell you), but it is part of the necessary infrastructure for a modern health system, that will leader to safer higher quality and more efficient care (but these efficiencies will typically be found in clinical staff having more time to care, rather than rooting around for scraps of patient information, rather than in cash savings).
 
The Government could reduce this cost a bit, by not giving cash and instead giving vouchers for things like holidays, supermarkets or department stores, which they could buy in bulk and at a discount.

Anything that's done needs to be very clearly given on once off basis, and preferably only given to those earning below a certain income threshold -I see no reason to give it to high earners, no more than pay them overtime etc. !
 
St James's isn't a HSE hospital,
So the biggest acute hospital in Ireland isn't controlled or run by the HSE and instead operates its own systems and processes. Is that really the case?
If so it's both amazing and appalling.
it does have one of the more advanced electronic health records in the Irish public system, but it is still being rolled out, so you will still find fragmented records there across different department..
Wow, that's amazing and appalling too.
But generally the Irish publicly funded health system is 20 years behind other health systems in terms of electronic health records
And in terms of organisational structure and general byzantine layers at every turns, which is probably the reason for the electronic health records being delayed and so expensive . And that's the reason for the waste.
- paper records are still predominant. It's a necessary investment to make, and will cost well over a billion over 10 to 15 years.
Without restructuring of other areas, yes it will.
There are billions to be saved, but not with putting electronic reporting systems on top of the existing structures. Anyone in a management position in the health service who doesn't see that is incompetent and is part of the problem.
 
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Worth
Worth reading up on Section 38 organisations to understand how the large Dublin hospitals and Dublin maternity hospitals and some others are publicly funded but not part of HSE. I don’t know anyone who thinks that bringing them under HSE management would improve them!

Reading your post, if you don’t mind me saying you have a certain amateur naivety about healthcare organisation. Electronic health records are fundamentally different from ‘electronic reporting systems’. Also, it’s unclear whether the problem with the HSE and broader public system is principally structural. There’s a strong argument to be made that it is cultural.

The cost I was putting forward for electronic health records is not an inflated cost due to Irish structures, but pretty well benchmarked internationally. The main reason, I suggest that no progress has been made here is the DPER reluctance to fund, probably as a fallout of the PPARS debacle.