THE States Business Plan for next year, which was published earlier this week, made it clear not only that the Island is facing difficult times but also that government feels compelled to respond by making public sector cuts. Just how deeply those cuts are likely to bite is now becoming clearer.

However, it is unlikely that many Islanders will have guessed that the first round of economies to cause a stir would have involved health services, but that is how matters stand.

To be fair, the way in which legitimately concerned staff have flagged up the service cut issues will have thrust it into the spotlight, but the fact that health – long considered to be the sacrosanct service – should be subject to potentially damaging economies must come as something of a shock.

The most prominent proposed cutback concerns Patient Transport Services, the system which takes many elderly people to day centres and clinics. In the view of a leading paramedic, if the plan is put into action, lives could be at risk.

Meanwhile, other economies are likely to involve grants to Acet, the Aids charity, and a special-needs respite home, Maison Allo. And there is even a possibility that charges will have to be levied from patients in the General Hospital’s Accident and Emergency department to balance the budget.

Against the background of the savings that government must undoubtedly make to meet the challenges of the next few years these cuts are quite disturbing enough, but a further factor moves them into an entirely new category of concern.

By the Health department’s own admission, some retrenchment is necessary because of the large sums spent as a consequence of senior staff suspensions. In other words, cuts in valuable services are, at least in part, being driven by expenditure that, from the point of view of the public good, has achieved nothing.

Warnings are scattered throughout the 108 pages of the new Business Plan, but it is a document that few will read. Consequently, the emergence of health as a service area to be threatened by job losses has all the makings of a public relations disaster. It will be instructive to see how politicians deal with this.

Islanders will have to get used to the idea that serious problems require extreme remedies, but they will take some convincing that health – or, indeed, education – belong anywhere near the top of the savings programme list.