Donegal’s Sinn Féin TDs said that underfunding in the health service this year is putting Donegal patients’ lives at risk.
The HSE recently announced that it will be extending its current recruitment freeze to almost all nursing and midwifery grades until the end of the year, with a few exceptions.
The HSE says it has already reached the recruitment target it was funded for this year.
Sinn Féin is calling for the recruitment embargo to be lifted immediately. A motion will be brought forward by the party’s spokesperson on Health, David Cullinane, this evening.
Donegal Deputies Pearse Doherty and Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said that the embargo spells disaster.
Teachta Doherty said: “The Government’s decision to underfund the health service this year and next has now led to a recruitment embargo, meaning 7,000 essential posts have now been scrapped.
“This will have a significant impact in Donegal and at Letterkenny University Hospital, a hospital that is desperately understaffed.
“78 Donegal GPs and 11 Consultants at LUH recently wrote to the Minister, in an unprecedented move, highlighting their concern for their patients when they send them to LUH.
“LUH, like many hospitals across the state, does not need a recruitment embargo brought about by the failures of the government. They need to see staffing levels return to safe levels.
“It is unforgivable that this crisis at LUH is happening when the government’s surplus is what it is.
“This evening, Sinn Féin Health spokesperson, David Cullinane, is bringing forward a motion to the Dáil calling on the Government to lift the recruitment embargo and properly fund the health service, to urgently bring forward revised estimates for 2023 to properly fund the health service to year end, and reverse its disastrous decision to deliberately underfund the health service in 2024.”
Deputy Mac Lochlainn added: “The Government have thrown in the towel regarding health. The longer that they are in power the worse things will get and we have seen this so profoundly in Donegal.
“The memorandums sent by the Chief Executive Officer of the Health Service Executive which directed a severe escalation in the recruitment embargo across the health service notes that the embargo ‘will create difficulties’ in the face of ‘an enormous increase in demand’.
“The Government is putting patients’ lives at risk this winter and beyond.
“It has caused the removal of vital frontline vacant posts here in Donegal which were needed for the winter ahead, and the withdrawal of job offers from prospective health service workers.
“It has sent a message to Irish workers abroad not to come home, a message to workers frustrated with the health service in Ireland to emigrate, and a message to overseas health services to come and take our healthcare workers.
“It is in black and white that this decision will spell disaster.”