The HSE's National Service Plan 2012 recognised that the transposition into Irish law of the Temporary Agency Work Directive would increase the unit cost of agency staffing. In the health service, agency staff have traditionally been used to meet a short-term service need or where some flexibility in staffing a service is required. In 2011, although the HSE had negotiated new agency contracts which involve lower unit costs, the use of agency staff accounted for approximately €200 million. This was accounted for in part by the usage of agency staffing to cover longer-term staffing needs. This was not a sustainable approach and the HSE's National Service Plan 2012 commits to significantly reducing the expenditure on agency staff usage with a target reduction of up to 50%. The Plan also contains a commitment that overtime and agency staffing are not to be used to support service levels beyond those agreed in the Plan or to substitute for staff losses.
The HSE has been undertaking preparatory work with the agencies that are contracted to provide staff to ensure that the agencies and the HSE would be in a position to implement the legislation quickly once enacted. The Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Bill has now been enacted and entitles agency workers to the same basic working and employment conditions, such as pay, working time, rest periods, etc. as directly employed staff with effect from 5 December 2011. Health sector employers will continue to work with the contracting agencies so that retrospective payments can be made to agency staff in a reasonable time period.
