We regret to advise that for the third time in the past 2 years, delays with the recruitment of staff for both DIT Student Health Centres in Aungier and Linenhall threatened the opening of both facilities for students this week.
As your student representatives on the Governing Body (GB) we first raised these issues at the GB meeting in March 2018, this was in response to the partial closure of the Linenhall Centre in January / February following the failure to appoint staff to fill vacancies that had arisen. We were given assurances that steps would be taken to address these delays at that time but despite these assurances it is clear that recruitment timelines in HR processes has not improved in any meaningful way.
On 5th September we were made aware that the DIT Student Health Centre in Aungier St wouldn’t be able to open on the 17th September due to a lack of trained admin staff to deal with appointments, record-keeping etc. and would only be capable of dealing with emergency appointments. Similarly in Linenhall a part-time vacancy had not been filled in time either.
Immediately, VP for Welfare, Roisin, called on the President of DIT Professor Norton to take steps to address this problem and we raised this urgent issue with the DIT Governing Body at its meeting last week. From DITSU’s understanding, the significant delays in staff hiring has ultimately caused our essential Health Centre to operate on an emergency basis only.
DIT’s Response:
DIT failed to respond back in March and our intervention, President Norton has given permission for receptionist staff to be hired externally from an agency to cover the gaps as DIT staff have not been appointed in time.
Our information is that both Health Centres are operational from 17th September. However this is an interim solution to fix the problem and while it addresses the issue temporarily it is not this is not good enough. Both Health Centres and other critical services that students use on a daily basis need to be adequately staffed and any vacancies occur need to be filled speedily.
At our insistence and with the support of the rest of the members, DIT HR Department will attend the next Governing Body meeting to explain their processes and address our concerns. We want them to outline their plans to deal with staffing issues more efficiently and set out what resources are needed to address speed up their recruitment/appointment procedures so that these are fit for purpose.
We will continue to lobby about inadequacies in the services provided for students and will report back after that meeting with an update. If this is not addressed we will go public and protest due to the inadequacy of the services you are provided for students which students are entitled to through the student contribution charge.
If you experience any negative experiences or are unsatisfied with any of the services, please contact me at welfare@ditsu.ie.
