The State's hospital consultants have warned that proposals to create a new grade of less experienced consultant is a retrograde step.
The Department of Health is proposing a Category 3 consultant who will be younger on appointment and work longer hours.
Consultants now have between 12 and 17 years of postgraduate training and experience before being appointed a consultant. As a result, the average age of a new consultant is 36. The Department wants to lower this to the late 20s to early 30s.
The Department is also proposing that this new category of consultant work 39 hours a week, compared to the 33 worked by current categories.
"To appoint someone of lesser experience to a job which is more demanding because of increasing population and more sophisticated healthcare technology seems to be a retrograde step," said the secretary-general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA), Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick.
The IHCA will meet senior Department officials today to express their concerns about the new posts, which are being proposed as part of a staffing review.
The IHCA believes 1,000 new appointments for the existing consultant grade are needed. There are now 1,200 consultants with public appointments, and 300 posts will be created as a result of retirements by the end of 2006.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the Department needed to completely rethink the hospital services. Full routine hospital services to include medical, nursing, paramedical and administrative services needed to be available for longer each day.
"There is little benefit of having extra consultants, or in having consultants on duty for longer hours, if routine hospital services are not available to them," he said.
Beds and operating theatres were closed in most Dublin hospitals at the moment, with the result that some recently appointed consultant surgeons did not have any bed allocation, outpatient slots or theatre time.