About the Health Service Executive

The HSE provides thousands of different services in hospitals and communities across the country. These services range from public health nurses treating older people in the community to caring for children with challenging behaviour; from educating people how to live healthier lives to performing highly-complex brain surgery; from planning for major emergencies to controlling the spread of infectious diseases. At some stage every year, everybody in Ireland will use one or more of the services provided. They are of vital importance to the entire population.

The establishment of the HSE represents the beginning of the largest programme of change ever undertaken in the Irish public service. Prior to this, services were delivered through a complex structure of ten regional Health Boards, the Eastern Regional Health Authority and a number of other different agencies and organisations.  The HSE replaces all of these organisations. It is now the single body responsible for ensuring that everybody can access cost effective and consistently high quality health and personal social services. The service is delivered making best use of resources allocated by Government. The largest employer in the State, the HSE employs more than 65,000 staff in direct employment and a further 35,000 staff are funded by the HSE. The budget of almost EUR12 billion is the largest of any public sector organisation.