IRELAND IS facing legal action in the European Court of Justice unless it presents measures to reduce doctors’ working hours and harmonise them with EU law.
The European Commission put the Government on notice yesterday that Irish doctors were potentially putting patients at risk by working, in some cases, 100-hour weeks – more than double the 48- hour maximum allowed.
“In Ireland’s case, national law provides for limits to doctors’ working time, but in practice public hospitals often do not apply the rules to doctors in training or other non-consultant hospital doctors,” the commission said in a statement. “There are still numerous cases where junior doctors are regularly obliged to work continuous 36-hour shifts, to work over 100 hours in a single week and 70-75 hours a week on average and to continue working without adequate breaks for rest or sleep.”
The Government has two months to respond to what the commission called a “serious infringement” of the EU working time directive, before it goes to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The directive, binding for doctors since 2004, specifies a maximum 48-hour working week on average, including overtime.
After highlighting the issue in Ireland two years ago, the commission said changes promised by the Government had not improved substantially the situation of doctors. The “reasoned opinion” from the commission – the second stage of addressing infringements of EU law – could lead to the next stage of legal action, but a hearing would be at least two years away.
In more than 90 per cent of infringement cases, the commission said member states complied with their obligations under EU law before they went to court.
The commission sent a similar warning to Greece where, it said, doctors in public hospitals often had to work a minimum 64-hour week and more than 90 hours a week in some cases.
Neither Ireland nor Greece applied for exemptions or opt-outs from the working time directives.
The Department of Health acknowledged receipt of the reasoned opinion and said it and the Health Service Executive would “examine the opinion and prepare its response within the required timeline”.
Dr Mark Murphy, chairman of the Irish Medical Organisation’s non-consultant hospital doctor committee, said the executive continued to “deny non-consultant hospital doctors their legal rights and in the process potentially compromises patient care and safety”.