Nearly €15,000 spent on agency staff at Connolly Hospital

Local Sinn Féin TD Paul Donnelly has criticised the HSE for what he calls “over-reliance” on outsourcing.

He said that the practice currently deployed by the HSE is “unacceptable and completely unsustainable.”

Donnelly’s comments come in the wake of figures released to party health spokesperson David Cullinane, with figures showing that  €14,704 was spent on private agency staffing in Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, in 2024.

The hospital, a major employer in Donnelly’s constituency in Dublin West, spent €6,077 on private agency staff in 2021.

Across Ireland as a whole, €725 million was spent on private agency staff in 2024, an increase of 33% since 2021.

“Since 2021, the HSE has forked out €2.9 billion on private agency staffing, which comes at a premium cost; it is incredible that the HSE could consider this wasteful spending to be sustainable” Donnelly remarked.

The TD criticised what he calls “wasteful over-reliance on agency spending.”

He said the practice has long been an area identified as an area where real savings can be made by the government, but the costs have seen an increase since 2021.

“We are still seeing year-on-year increases, despite the government’s health productivity and savings taskforce,” he noted.

“This spike comes at the same time and, in my view, is directly related to the government’s arbitrary recruitment limits under the pay and numbers strategy. These staff are needed to provide essential services, but they cannot be recruited directly, so the HSE is paying a premium price for agency workers instead.”

The Dublin West TD said “the health service needs an ambitious and realistic workforce plan to directly train, recruit, and retain the workers needed to safely staff the health service, and strict targets to significantly reduce runaway agency spending.”

“That is what Sinn Féin proposed in our health plan, and it is what we will propose again in our alternative budget because the problems in the health service will never be addressed without a serious multi-annual plan that is fully thought-through.”

He put the blame on the reliance on private agency workers at the feet of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments. 

“They have failed to produce any comprehensive plan to address this. Instead, they are limping year-to-year with pretend plans that lack any long-term vision,” he said.

“The productivity taskforce and the pay and number strategy are merely sticking-plaster solutions that have not worked. As a result of these shortsighted, ineffective measures, our health service has been left with no choice but to rely heavily on agency workers.”

In the Programme for Government, published in January, the government pledged to “reduce reliance on contract and agency workers” as well as “to consider measures to attract and retain staff in the health and social care sector.”

In April, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll McNeill said my Department and the HSE are committed to direct employment rather than the use of Agency services “where possible.”

In the Irish Examiner this week, it was reported that despite pledges from the government that they are looking to reduce the usage of agency workers in the healthcare system, €52.1 million has been spent so far in 2025.

The article noted that the HSE is unable to fill roles owing to the housing crisis, leading to agency staff being used.

Age Action said that the usage of agency staff within the healthcare system is problematic, with Camille Loftus, head of advocacy and public affairs with Age Action, telling the newspaper “a reliance on agency staff in healthcare services is a healthcare risk.”

The usage of agency staff in the HSE, much like the Universal Social Charge or “voluntary” contribution fees to school,  are hangovers from the Trioka era that have become a permanent fixture.

The introduction of private sector elements into the Irish healthcare system has proven controversial ever since the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats government of the late 90s and early 2000s entrenched them into the system.

Overcrowding and understaffing have become the rule rather than the exception in the Irish healthcare system as a result.

Sláintecare has been proposed as an alternative to the mix of private and state elements within the healthcare system, with the eventual goal of ridding Ireland of the current two-tier system and converting it into a single-tier one.

Despite repeated government assurances that Sláintecare is going to be implemented, there has been little appetite to introduce the changes, leading to the current situation, seen in Connolly Hospital, where private agency staff are drafted in to do the work of public staff.

“It makes no sense to place a stranglehold on the recruitment of essential health service staff while at the same time paying exorbitant sums to agencies to fill the gaps created, in part, by these restrictions,” said Liam Quaide, the Social Democrats’ health spokesperson.

“An over-reliance on agency staff makes for disjointed service development within a sector where continuity of care and stable therapeutic relationships are vital,” the TD said.