"More Government Waste as HSE Pays out €2.5 Billion in Compensation Over Past Decade" - Tóibín
According to figures released to the Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD, following a Parliamentary Question, some €2.5 Billion has been paid out by the HSE in compensation since 2014. In the three years 2021 - 2023, a Billion was paid out.
Speaking today, Deputy Tóibín said: "In the first few months of this year the HSE imposed a recruitment ban on nurses in our hospitals, because they said they hadn't enough money, yet during the same period they paid out €170 million in compensation to people whose lives had been negatively impacted or destroyed as a result of mistakes in our health service. It doesn't take a genius to realise that there is a correlation between nurses pay and conditions, hospital capacity, and the mistake rate in our hospitals".
Deputy Tóibín continued: "We've seen scandals in the news recently in relation to the bicycle shed in Leinster House, and indeed the shocking overspend on the National Children's Hospital. With HSE compensation we're talking about the same amount of money. That's a hole in the public purse the size of 9,380 two-bedroom council houses. There's a shocking economic cost to this - but there's also a terrible cost to the patients who were failed or wronged by the system. The number of adverse incidents in the health service has increased significantly in the last few years topping 100,000 a year now. Proper investment in our health service, improvements to ambulance response times, to bed capacity, staffing levels and a reopening of the Emergency Departments which ere closed would lead to a reduction in mistakes and payouts - it would save the State money in the long term, and fewer people would be dying or injured due to mistakes".
"The upcoming budget represents an opportunity for the government to invest in the health service to prevent the further escalation of this disaster. The recruitment freeze which resulted for the budget last year is unforgiveable, and has done enormous damage to the country. I cannot comprehend how in the middle of the health crisis in our country, the boys in charge decided that an appropriate step would be to stop employing nurses. Behind many of these statistics is a sick person, or worse a grieving family. The government owe those people an apology, and a commitment to change things", concluded Deputy Tóibín.
