Hospital staff in Limerick have voted for industrial action in protest at high executive pay levels.
The Irish Times revealed last month that the Limerick group of hospitals had had paid a senior manager, employed under a contract arrangement, €258,000 over a 13-month period since last year.
Earlier this month the chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness raised concerns that a company known as Starline Management Consulting Ltd was paid €258,000 to fill the position of chief operations officer/deputy chief executive officer at the hospital group.
The trade union Impact said that 90 per cent of members in the Limerick group of hospitals had voted in favour of taking industrial action “following the concerns expressed by the union about corporate governance and senior staff salaries in the hospital group”.
It said the industrial action will involve a refusal to report to the manager of the hospital group.
Impact assistant general secretary Andy Pike said: "This industrial action is designed to highlight the opposition of hospital staff to the excessive and unwarranted salary payments to a senior manager through a management consultancy. It is not envisaged that the action would affect the delivery of services in any way."
“The HSE director general has said the mid-west hospital group needs additional administration staff to provide vital services to patients. The money spent employing just one management consultant would cover the costs of at least five clerical staff to help the hospitals cope with increasing demands. In these circumstances, staff very much resent reporting to a senior manager who is being paid at least twice the correct rate for the job,” he said.
A spokesman for the HSE said and internal audit process was underway to satisfy the director general Tony O’Brien on the background to the situation.
Mr O’Brien told the Public Accounts Committee earlier this month that the post in Limerick had been publicly advertised on two occasions but could not be filled.
Mr O’Brien said the Limerick group of hospitals was a very important one and was at a critical stage of its development with a number of challenges to overcome.
“ The group chief executive officer, the interim board and I identified the necessity to strengthen the management team there. We have, for example, by open competition put in a financial officer there that it did not have before, as well as other posts.
“This particular post simply proved impossible to fill for a variety of reasons, as sometimes occurs. Consequently, on an interim basis, pending the rerunning of the competition, we used an agency-based approach. In other words, we brought in someone from an agency to fill the role,” he said.
“ It is not by any means the most desirable way but the options available were to leave vacant a critical post in a highly challenged group of hospitals at a time of enormous improvements needing to be made. In consequence, it was agreed to fill the post on that basis, and so it is not an employee, it is a contractor. “
The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform told the Irish Times last week that people appointed on consultancy contracts to carry out work for public bodies werer not covered by the Government's official pay ceiling of about €185,000 - the salary of the Taoiseach.
