{"id":576116,"date":"2026-07-30T21:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T21:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576116\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T21:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T21:12:09","slug":"recruitment-needed-in-frontline-healthcare-staff-not-management-says-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576116\/","title":{"rendered":"Recruitment needed in frontline healthcare staff not management, says Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

There needs to be a greater focus on recruiting frontline healthcare staff rather than management or administrators, Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers has said.<\/p>\n

He was speaking at a press conference on Thursday about a need for \u201cefficiencies\u201d in how the public sector is staffed.<\/p>\n

It comes as the Mid-Year Expenditure Report, published on Thursday, warned that in the health sector, growth in expenditure and staffing \u201chas not always been matched by equivalent growth in activity levels, reinforcing the importance of productivity and reform\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also noted that in social protection, targeted interventions \u201ccan often deliver greater benefits to lower-income households than broad-based measures\u201d.<\/p>\n

If you take the health service, for example, the report outlines, in some instances, greater levels of growth in management and admin than frontline capacity<\/p>\n

Jack Chambers<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a need for much greater efficiencies in how we deploy public sector staffing,\u201d Mr Chambers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had significant growth, for example, in management and administrative staff in recent years, but in my view, we need to focus on frontline deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take the health service, for example, the report outlines, in some instances, greater levels of growth in management and admin than frontline capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, that\u2019s not acceptable into the medium term, and we have to have much greater focus on frontline deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re being very clear that growth needs to be aligned with service needs and priorities, not growth everywhere. And that\u2019s why there\u2019ll have to be choices around future staff deployment, around where the greatest service need is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there had been a 150 per cent increase in agency staff in the last six years, coinciding with a 62 per cent increase in doctors and a 36 per cent increase in nurses being hired, and he said it was \u201cnot sustainable\u201d to have an \u201cuplift in both\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI think there\u2019s elements of our health system which will need to be much more efficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the input costs and the level of expenditure has not been connected to the level of outputs, despite a growth of \u20ac10 billion in the last number of years, and that speaks to a system that needs reform, improved productivity, and much greater and more efficient deployment of staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cEndless recruitment everywhere doesn\u2019t improve outcomes for citizens or outputs for people who want a better public health system.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"176<\/p>\n

Ireland<\/p>\n

176 units at Glass Bottle site sold for social housing at average cost of \u20ac466,748<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He also said the Department of Education was \u201cwithin\u201d its new budgetary allocation, taking into account an extra 646 million euro in 2026, \u20ac446 million of which has been shared across government for 2027.<\/p>\n

The Mid-Year Expenditure Report is a planning exercise on the \u201ctrade-offs\u201d facing government which forms part of the budgetary process.<\/p>\n

The Budget is due to be announced in the D\u00e1il on October 6th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There needs to be a greater focus on recruiting frontline healthcare staff rather than management or administrators, Public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":["post-576116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}