Staff cuts cloud Irish public sector An incentive scheme aimed at reducing the number of staff employed in Ireland's public sector has raised fears that frontline services will suffer and sparked a bitter political row over the country's health service. Almost 8,000 public sector workers have applied for early retirement under a scheme aimed at cutting the government's wage bill to meet deficit reduction targets in its international bail-out programme. Dublin says the reduction in public sector staff from 300,000 in 2011 to 294,000 by the end of 2012 will shave €400m off the public sector wage bill. But the significant uptake of the incentive scheme, which was announced on Wednesday, is leading to fears that frontline public services will be over stretched when most of the staff leave at the end of February. Dr Gerry Burke, a consultant obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Limerick, told The Financial Times that women and babies could pay with their lives due to staff shortages and a lack of adequate contingency plans. "It is obvious that the Health Service Executive is prepared to collude with the Department of Health in making pregnant women and their newborn babies contribute to paying for the gambling losses of German and other international banks and for the fiscal recklessness of previous governments," he said. Dr Burke's comments, which he first made to Irish media last week, have provoked a storm of political controversy. Enda Kenny, Ireland's prime minister, described Dr Burke's comments as "outrageous" while government ministers have rushed to step up efforts to put in place contingency plans to deal with the exodus. Figures released by the government on Wednesday show 3,500 healthcare workers, 1,500 teachers, 730 local authority staff and 298 police are among 7,772 people who applied for the scheme by a deadline late on Tuesday. Under the incentive scheme public sector staff, who retire by the end of February, are eligible for pensions based on their salaries before average pay cuts of 14 per cent were introduced in 2008 and 2009 in response to Ireland's economic crisis. Dublin says the cuts are necessary to help it reduce its budget deficit in line with targets outlined in the European Union and the International Monetary Fund bail-out programme in 2010. Public sector pay costs the exchequer €20bn per year, accounting for about a third of public spending. The government plans to reduce the total number of public servants by a further 11,500 by 2015 to 282,500, which would create overall savings of about €2.5bn in the public service wage bill. There has to be an understanding that we are in a downsizing mode... We have to do things differently. We are looking at the delivery of public service in a different way," said Brendan Howlin, Ireland's minister for public expenditure. He said on Wednesday he could not guarantee there would be no individual problems when the staff left at the end of this month. But trade unions warn the loss of 8,000 senior staff will have a major impact on service delivery to the public. Economists also warn that cutting staff numbers, rather than implementing further cuts in public sector pay, is not the best strategy to maintain public services. This requires a hybrid solution encompassing reduced headcount in areas where excess capacity exists and reduced public sector pay levels to bridge any shortfalls. We have seen some progress reducing headcount but public sector pay remains relatively untouched," said Conall Mac Coille, economist with Davy Stockbrokers.