The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) is to encourage its members to reject the proposed new Croke Park agreement in a forthcoming ballot.
The IMO’s policy-making council today backed the decision of its negotiators to leave the talks process before they reached a conclusion last week.
The doctors’ trade union said its council had “unanimously agreed that the proposals for the new agreement should be put to the relevant members of the IMO for a vote.
“The council also agreed unanimously to recommend that members would vote against the proposals," it said.
IMO director of industrial relations Steve Tweed said the union would campaign strongly to try to secure a “No” vote on the Croke Park proposals.
“Our opposition to these proposals is based first and foremost on the risk we believe these proposals pose to patient safety and care. As far as our members are concerned, these proposals are designed to force doctors in public hospitals to work longer hours for less pay and that poses a real danger to the lives of the patients those doctors have to treat and to the health and well being of the doctors themselves.”
He said the HSE had acknowledged that under the proposals non-consultant hospital doctors who already worked illegal levels of hours would their working week extended.
Mr Tweed suggested that a doctor in a senior house officer II grade in a medical specialty who had a basic salary of €41,000 and an average working week of 55 hours would face a 14 per cent reduction in their gross pay under the current Croke Park proposals.
He said a doctor in a senior house officer II post in a surgical specialty would lose 16 per cent of gross salary under the Croke Park proposals.
