The Director of Health Services issued a memo to senior management outlining the extension of the hiring freeze, reports RTE.
In a memo seen by RTÉ News, director-general Bernard Gloster said the agency needed to control spending because its funding, although high, is “not adequate for all current costs”.
There will be a freeze on additional agency staff and non-consultant hospital doctors (earlier called junior doctors).
Other affected areas include patient and client care services, including healthcare assistants and home health aides.
Groups exempt from this freeze include authorized GP consultation and training posts, nursing and midwifery posts, dentists and orthodontists in public schools and emergency services, health and social care workers and pre-hospital care in the National Ambulance Service.
Gloster added that there will be no further hiring in 2024, apart from around 2,000 positions that have already been announced.
“This also means that previously approved posts in principle which cannot at this time be funded (circa 7000) will be removed from the profile”, he said, reports RTE.
The Irish Medical Organisation said it is “shocked and appalled” at the recruitment stop, a decision that “will inevitably impact negatively on patient care”.
Dr Rachel McNamara, Chair of the IMO NCHD (non-consultant hospital doctors) Committee, said: “This recruitment freeze flies in the face of safe staffing levels. It will add to the chaos in a system which already does not have enough doctors to deliver safe patient care, where many teams across the country are not fully staffed and where NCHDs are still working illegal and unsafe hours,” reports RTE.
“It is astounding that this decision could be made at this point in time. Even in the depths of austerity there was no recruitment freeze on medical professionals as it was recognised that delivery of services had to be prioritised. It is all the more ironic that swingeing cuts to staff and budgets, imposed during austerity, is what damaged the health service for over a decade and we are now repeating the same mistakes,” he added, reports RTE.
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