Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 26 November 2025
334. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health to specify how her Department calculates the financial implications arising from HSE posts that remain unfilled for more than six months, including the projected savings, additional costs linked to overtime or agency staffing, and the effect on service capacity; and to outline whether a standard methodology is applied across HSE regions. [66569/25]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe HSE does not produce pay or staffing data in sufficiently granular detail to calculate the financial implications of individual posts that remain vacant at different time intervals vacancies for more than three, six, nine or twelve months as the cost would exceed the benefit that could be derived from such an enhanced data capture exercise.
From data supplied by the HSE the Department can view:
• total staffing numbers versus agreed staffing limits by broad staff category such as Medical & Dental, Nursing & Midwifery and Health and Social Care Professional.
• total expenditure on pay for the year to date sorted by core pay, employers PRSI, agency, overtime and staff allowances, which vary significantly between staff categories.
The Department forecasts revised estimates of payroll costs each month, which include an estimate of the cost of any additional staff expected to onboard before year end. Also, as part of the annual budgetary estimates process, officials estimate the cost of filling the balance of vacant posts in current and subsequent years.
The HSE carry out similar exercises, but do not, to the Department's knowledge, produce rolling estimates of the financial implications of posts remaining unfilled for more than six months.
The methodology used by the Department in its estimates is necessarily high level in nature and is dictated by both the scale of the HSE workforce (~141,000 staff in D/Health funded posts in September 2025) and the nature of the data available. It involves the application of time apportioned annual average payroll costs for broad staff categories to vacancy rates for each of these broad categories.
The quantum of payroll data available will naturally improve, when the current IT projects (IFMS and NISRP) are fully implemented across the entire Health service.
