Republican News · Thursday 18 October 2001

Health chiefs to lose bonuses

Sinn Féin health minister Bairbre de Brún has introduced a new system of payment for senior health service employees that will end the old structure that awarded bonuses to senior executives at a time when the Health Service was underfunded in all major departments.

In her statement announcing the new scheme, to be introduced on 11 October, de Brún said: "There has been considerable public concern about pay awards made to some chief executives and directors in Trusts. Awards such as these cannot be justified when we have been facing such serious pressures on resources and I am determined to put an end to the last vestiges of the internal market."

The Sinn Féin minister said she was not prepared to continue with a pay system that has allowed variations and inequities to occur and that she wants to see pay arrangements which are seen to be fair to all staff in the health service.

Outlining the new pay scheme, de Brún said that the Department had designed a new approach to the pay and grading of senior executives, which aimed to be fairer, more transparent, defensible and affordable.

Adding that she was now, "drawing a line under the old system", de Brún acknowledged that her hands were tied in respect of some pay awards that were already entered into.

The old system, which was integral to the so-called 'internal market' introduced under the British Conservative government, created a health service with a top heavy bureaucracy that diverted much needed money away from the actually delivery of health services.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin Assembly member Sue Ramsey who sits on the Assembly's Health Committee has given a guarded welcome to an announcement by de Brún that she is about to end the system of GP fundholding within the health service.

Ramsey said Sinn Féin welcomed the move "as this system perpetuates inequalities within the Primary Care sector".