Non-consultant hospital doctors have deferred Wednesday's strike but have yet to decide if they will ballot members on a £60 million offer from the Health Service Employers' Agency.
Both sides are meeting again tomorrow. After that the NCHD committee of the Irish Medical Organisation is expected to take a final decision on whether to recommend the offer. The package works out at around £20,000 extra to be spent each year on the 3,000 NCHDs in the health services. Most of this will go towards enhanced overtime payments.
The £45 million assigned to overtime payments formed the basis of the interim settlement that ended last month's industrial action.
Under the new system NCHDs will receive time-and-a-quarter for the first 15 hours of overtime worked outside their core period of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during weekdays, and time-and-a-half for any additional overtime. They will receive double time for Sunday working.
The main new elements comprising the other £15 million are: £9 million for training purposes, £2 million for out-of-pocket expenses, such as relocation costs, travel and subsistence allowances, and £4 million for working public holidays, providing locum cover and in shift allowances for NCHDS working in accident and emergency departments.
At present, access to relocation expenses is restricted to senior registrars. The latest proposals should make these available to all NCHDs required to relocate. There is also provision for the appointment of new medical manpower managers in acute hospitals to help reduce the number of doctors working excessive hours. Large acute hospitals will have their own managers but smaller hospitals are likely to be grouped to avail of the new arrangement.
The Government is obliged to reduce the working week for NCHDs from 65 hours to 48 hours over the next nine years. One of the major grievances of the IMO has been the number of NCHDs required to work in excess of 65 hours a week. The organisation was expected to make a decision on whether to accept the new offer on Saturday. The deferral to allow for further talks with the HSEA is being taken as evidence of divided views within its NCHD committee.
The difficulty some committee members have in attending meetings and their relative inexperience in industrial relations are further complicating factors.