1.5k health posts being held empty
The Health Minister revealed the statistic when asked for an update on the 4000 jobs that could be lost as a result of the draft Budget 2011-15.
He replied: “Health Trusts are already operating stringent vacancy controls. This year alone, 1,500 posts are being held empty. They are being held empty because in 2010/11 the Executive chose to cut my budget by £113.5m and then another £16.6m as a result of swine flu.
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Hide Ad“And there have already been redundancies. I have been running a voluntary severance programme for RPA and CSR.
“If nothing changes in the budget, those 1,500 posts will disappear completely. The 4,000 figure is a conservative estimate of a redundancies figure over and above that.
“The equation is simple - if you want to staff the health service properly you need to be prepared to pay for that.”