IRISH MEDICAL ORGANISATION CONFERENCE: INDIVIDUAL HOSPITAL consultants have said they would be prepared to accept a pay pause if the money saved went back into the health service.
John Higgins, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Cork University Maternity Hospital, said he for one would be happy to see the higher payments due to consultants for working new contracts put on hold for a limited period if the resources saved were ringfenced for healthcare. However, he said this was not something he would like to impose on colleagues as many had different contracts and were at different stages in their working lives.
But he said that if a mechanism were put in place for individuals to agree to a pay pause “then it would be something I would be willing to do and I think many consultants would”.
“If you are talking to consultants they would be supportive that the system is in difficulty, our entire country is in difficulty and they’re honestly a group that would do a lot,” he added.
He added that he did not want to see the implementation of the new consultants’ contract, agreed last year after four years of negotiation, stopped just because of the money issue.
As part of the new contract it was agreed consultants would work longer hours, be rostered in teams to work around the clock including at weekends, and for this they would get paid higher salaries ranging from €175,000 to €240,000, with the higher salary going to those who gave up private practice and committed to seeing public patients only.
He was speaking on the third and final day of the annual conference of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) in Killarney on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Dr Cillian Twomey, a consultant geriatrician at Cork University Hospital, said all parties had signed up to the new contract and therefore it should be honoured in its entirety. But he said he was not personally opposed to a pay pause.
“I think as regards a pay pause that’s a matter that would have to be discussed a bit more between the IMO and the employers because not all consultants earn the same money . . . it seems to me that if there was to be a pay pause worked out . . . they may have to take into consideration the earning capacity of the different types of consultant . . . and that any such pause might have to be a proportionate one rather than just a single figure across the board and there may well be some support for that because I think all consultants do recognise that these are extraordinarily difficult times and so that’s something that may be worthy of exploration but I think it would have to be on a proportionate basis,” he said.
“If there was to be such a thing, personally I’m not intuitively opposed to it, but I think it would have to be on a pro rata basis because not all consultants are the same even though the general public might think we are all multi-millionaires,” he added.
Prof Seán Tierney, a vascular surgeon at Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital and vice-president of the IMO, called on the Minister for Health Mary Harney to direct the HSE to implement all provisions of the new consultants’ contract.
Prof Tierney said that while the focus on the new contract in the media had been on pay there were other important issues: the fact that even though consultants could work late in outpatients the back-up staff required were not available; the fact that new clinical directors appointed under the contract had no resources; and the fact that the promise to appoint an extra 1,000 consultants to allow a consultant-provided service be delivered had not materialised.
He also said consultants want the new contract implemented but will talk to the Government about having their contracts negotiated again if the State is unable to pay the higher salaries it agreed to. About 85 per cent of consultants have signed the new contacts. Some signed last August but to date have not got paid anything extra.
Ms Harney has indicated she is considering how to fund their pay rises in the context of a revised HSE service plan for this year which is currently on her desk for approval.