THERE is likely to be widespread agreement that Jersey’s health service is in need of changes that will enable it to cope with the challenges imposed by obsolete buildings, costly modern therapies, staff recruitment and retention and the pressure of an ageing population.

There is likely to be equally widespread agreement that those in charge of the programme of change seem to be bent on achieving their goals by throwing vast sums of money at their project.

Three quarters of a million pounds have already been earmarked for a business consultants’ report that will set the ball rolling, but many Islanders will be more concerned about the sums already being spent on the multi-layered management structure that, it is asserted, is essential if health and social services are to meet the demands of the 21st century.

One sum in particular will raise eyebrows in the direction of the stratosphere – the £312,000 a year, or £26,000 a month, being paid to hospital managing director Andrew McLaughlin.

It has been pointed out that Mr McLaughlin, who was earning between £110,000 and £140,000 before coming to the Island, earns almost as much in a calendar month as a staff nurse earns in a year. Very little empathy is required to understand the impact that this statistic will make on the health service’s frontline workers, who face the daily pressures and stresses of life on our hospital wards.

Mr McLaughlin might be doing an excellent job. Indeed, we are told that he works long hours during his five-day week in the Island. However, many people will take issue with Health Minister Anne Pryke’s insistence that his services represent value for money.

Many are also likely to see such an extortionate level of remuneration as an affront to the man in the street in this era of austerity, job losses, tax increases, the imposition of wage restraint – and the partial closure of our cancer unit.

It is legitimate to ask if the States Members – and particularly the Council of Ministers – can possibly expect to be taken seriously when they simultaneously say that economic sacrifices are vital and then sanction paying an executive considerably more than twice the rate he was receiving in his former job in the UK.

Meanwhile, Islanders should note that we have Deputy Angela Jeune, herself a former nurse, to thank for these revelations about an extraordinary level of pay. Without her persistence in the House it is improbable that facts about Mr McLaughlin’s staggering terms would ever have emerged.

Now, more searching questions must be asked to establish who sanctioned this extraordinary state of affairs and how it can be prevented from recurring