Family doctors are set to take industrial action at what they see is a failure of the Government to include them in a benchmarking process, to pay national wage awards and to introduce special fees for medical care for refugees and asylum-seekers. Martin Wall reports.
The GP committee of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) decided in principle yesterday at a meeting in Dundalk that industrial action should go ahead.
The president of the IMO, Dr James Reilly, told The Irish Times last night that the industrial action would be incremental, and the nature and timing would be decided later.
The IMO is also to launch a poster campaign aimed at highlighting the failure of the Government to meet commitments to provide 200,000 extra medical cards. Dr Reilly said not only had the Government failed to provide the medical cards, but there were 100,000 fewer people covered by the free GP and drugs scheme now than there were several years ago.
The IMO has argued that it was promised that GPs would be covered by a benchmarking process in return for their agreement in allowing the medical card scheme to be extended to everyone aged over 70 regardless of means. It says the Government reneged on this commitment.
The doctors' association has also maintained that the Department of Health has refused to pay GPs the 2 per cent awarded to other groups who settled early under the last national wage agreement.
The IMO is also looking for special fees for GPs who provide medical care to refugees and asylum-seekers. It said an independent report had found that this group often had more severe medical problems.
The GP committee, at its meeting yesterday, also expressed concern at revelations in The Irish Times that large-scale State investment in the primary care strategy was to be deferred until 2007. Dr Reilly said the report was evidence of their suspicions that the primary care strategy was just a "smokescreen for inactivity".
He said general practice was facing a manpower crisis as young doctors were attracted to other areas of the profession. In the future large parts of urban and rural Ireland would be without a GP.
The IMO president said the country's hospitals would face "a catastrophe" if GP services became unavailable.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday urged the IMO to use the State's industrial relations machinery to deal with its grievances. He also called on the IMO to engage in a review of the medical card scheme.
Dr Reilly said the IMO would not participate in talks on a new contract "until money owed was paid, and agreements in place were implemented".