Irish government offers voluntary redundancy to health service staff

The Irish government has offered its first major voluntary severance and early retirement package for over 20 years, in a bid to cut €200 million a year off the health service pay bill.The Health Service Executive (HSE), which runs the €14 billion health service, last week offered 28,000 administrative staff voluntary severance terms of three weeks’ pay per year of service plus statutory entitlements of two weeks per year – with the total capped at two years’ pay.