Is HSE ambulance service equivalent to an illegal closed shop?

[Expose the lot of them]

Meskell v CIE.

Thank you.

[patslatt]

I stopped reading at the mention of PWC....sorry Pat................

They can add and subtract,despite the weaknesses revealed among bank auditors generally!

[Expose the lot of them]

If the private companies' ambulance staff are merely van drivers,how did they pass muster and get contracts from the HSE in the first place? Government contracting is very bureaucratic and designed to be risk free to the managers responsible,so you can be sure that the private ambulance staff must have met reasonable tests of skill.

The courts will have to make interesting decisions on whether it has the right to interfere with a management prerogative to fire contractors and to do so even in the case of bad business decisions. In the case of a private sector company,the court could assume that a company would not willingly fire a contractor and do the work at a higher long-term cost in-house given the strong private sector drive to make profits.But bureaucratic cost controls,often weak,replace the profit motive in state owned enterprises,so can the court decide that the HSE was acting against the interest of taxpayers and order it to reverse the decision? It would need proof that the private ambulance drivers were still qualified for the work they were doing and that the HSE were obviously wasting money bringing the work in-house,probably under pressure from SIPTU. Even if the court had such proof,it still would be very unlikely to interfere with the management prerogatives of a public sector body.That's because such interference would create a court precedent to interfere in politically motivated,bad financial decisions made every day in democracy.

The best the court case can achieve is to highlight another scandalously wasteful management decision of the HSE dinosaur and force politicians to step in out of public embarrassment.

What are you raving about? When did SIPTU stop the HSE from tendering or force it to "fire a contractor"? Public sector contract are regularly put out to tender and generally the winning provider will be given a time limited contract, at the end of the specificed term the service is put out to tender again. There HSE has awarded contracts to private taxi companies to transport patients (the nature of some of these awards has been questioned), the staff of private ambulance companies are not trained and qualified to paramedica standard and may well be used for the type of transport that is also provided by taxis.

I believe that the emergency ambulance service in Dublin is provided by the Dublin Fire Brigade and not the HSE.

Firefly is the one to set you right on your wild assertions.

[patslatt]

What are you raving about? When did SIPTU stop the HSE from tendering or force it to "fire a contractor"? Public sector contract are regularly put out to tender and generally the winning provider will be given a time limited contract, at the end of the specificed term the service is put out to tender again. There HSE has awarded contracts to private taxi companies to transport patients (the nature of some of these awards has been questioned), the staff of private ambulance companies are not trained and qualified to paramedica standard and may well be used for the type of transport that is also provided by taxis.

I believe that the emergency ambulance service in Dublin is provided by the Dublin Fire Brigade and not the HSE.

Firefly is the one to set you right on your wild assertions.

Your tendency to personal insult prevented you from addressing the key point of my argument:

"If the private companies' ambulance staff are merely van drivers,how did they pass muster and get contracts from the HSE in the first place? Government contracting is very bureaucratic and designed to be risk free to the managers responsible,so you can be sure that the private ambulance staff must have met reasonable tests of skill." Certainly they can be assumed to have sufficient skills for the jobs they were doing over the years. Now those jobs are being snatched back by the HSE.

To deny this would imply the HSE procurement process is run by very careless managers.

[Conor]

Your tendency to personal insult prevented you from addressing the key point of my argument:

"If the private companies' ambulance staff are merely van drivers,how did they pass muster and get contracts from the HSE in the first place? Government contracting is very bureaucratic and designed to be risk free to the managers responsible,so you can be sure that the private ambulance staff must have met reasonable tests of skill." Certainly they can be assumed to have sufficient skills for the jobs they were doing over the years. Now those jobs are being snatched back by the HSE.

To deny this would imply the HSE procurement process is run by very careless managers.

What does any of that have to do with SIPTU?

[patslatt]

What does any of that have to do with SIPTU?

Naturally SIPTU as the HSE ambulance drivers' union is opposed to contracting out.