Speaking yesterday at a conference, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said he wants to see 10% of all healthcare staff rostered on weekends by the end of June.
However, the chairman of the Irish Medical Organisation's consultant committee said that this could result in less consultants being available from Monday to Friday.
This comes after a parliamentary question from Aontú shows that almost 300,000 hospital appointments were cancelled last year.
Party leader Peadar Tóibín told The Anton Savage that this figure points directly to a lack of available resources in the healthcare system.
“There's a 45 % jump in the number of cancellations just in a period of two years,” he said.
“If this was a normal function of the health service and how they worked, we would see a fairly standard figure over the last five years - and that's not the case.
“It's jumping further this year, and also there are parts of the country which are far worse; for example, the Southwest is suffering significantly in terms of increased cancellations.
“Remember that these are... people with really serious illnesses, many of them on hospital waiting lists for a long period of time, maybe over a year.”
View this post on Instagram
Deputy Tóibín said that while better rostering is definitely part of the solution, nothing will change without increased resources.
“If we don't have the staff, we're thinning out the rest of the week to get people onto weekends and bank holidays,” he said.
“One of the big issues is that many staff are still leaving this country because pay terms and conditions are better elsewhere.
“In 2022, out of about 750 people who graduated in medicine, about 400 of those emigrated, which is a startling figure.”
According to Deputy Tóibín, 51% of students in Irish medical schools have come here to study from outside the EU.
He said that since these students pay higher fees, colleges are incentivised to reserve more places for them.
Main image: A nurse with a patient who is undergoing treatment for kidney disease on a kidney dialysis machine at a hospital. Image: Matthew Horwood / Alamy. 8 April 2014
