The health authorities are planning to open four expertise centers across Ireland. It is believed that the opening of centers would lead to retrenchment of 100 jobs to Northern Ireland health services.

The Department of Health is hopeful that through the new centers, about £100m would be saved in ten years. It has been informed that the authorities would start working on the project in the end of 2012.

It has further come to light that the authorities are planning to centralize the administration of five health trusts. Because of which, retrenchment might be faced by the staff. As per expectations, some staff of the Western Health Trust in payroll department would be transferred to Belfast.

Belfast, in the coming future, would become new payroll center. Moreover, the human resource department would be based in Armagh and the financial department would be located at Ballymena and Omagh.

However, if the staff is not willing to move to the new place then they will be given training to work in some other department. Shane Devlin of the Business Services Transformation Project was reported saying, “There are issues about potential relocation of jobs, but those are jobs that perhaps will see someone from Newry having to relocate to Ballymena or be redeployed within their own trust”.

However, before the authorities start working on the project, they would be required to go through a 12-week public consultation period which begun today. It is good to know that the authorities are putting efforts in bringing changes in administration of the trusts. It is hoped that the concerned authorities are able to achieve their targets without any delay. The authorities are confident that their plan would help in saving large sum of money.