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Sara Burke on HSE spending on agency nurses and recruitment moratoriums…
The C&AG cites the HSE’s own internal audit which shows that agency staff exceed the cost of employing nursing staff by 36.5% and he clearly implies that this is not the most efficient use of tight resources. Yet internal HSE figures for 2010 show that up to July of this year just under €30 million has been spent on agency nursing and €37 million on other agency staff, doctors, allied health profs etc..
This practice continues because if health managers want to keep services open they have no other choice to keep services safe, but it clearly highlights the blunt instrument that the moratorium is and the constraints its putting on the health service. It impacts on the quality of nursing care but also we are also seeing its impact on closed wards and reduced services.
Read this by Shane Ross: Humiliated, not humbled.
Anglo’s bosses immediately stood on their heads and pledged to promote the dreaded “wind-down” — the solution that they had been bad mouthing less than 24 hours earlier.
On Tuesday their mission was to keep Anglo alive; on Wednesday, to kill it.
Dukes lamely pleaded that the final solution was a “variation” on Anglo’s plan. Which it was not.
Will we now see the resignation of non-executive directors Dukes, Kennedy, Keane and Eames? Their pipe dream is in tatters. Rejected by the markets, the Commission, the Government — and undoubtedly by the people.
Not a chance.
The non-executives are humiliated but not humbled. Nothing has changed. Bankers sit tight, stand on their heads and take the money.
New location, old culture.
Miriam Cotton on women in politics, gender and merit.
John McHale on the mechanics of bond buy-backs.
Gerard O’Neill on illiberal democracy via Spiked! magazine.