Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Previous editions
Monday, July 06, 2009
HIGHLY paid hospital consultants appeared to be on a fresh collision course with the Government last night as their lucrative pay deal was targeted by An Bord Snip Nua.
A bruising drawn-out battle between the senior medics and Health Minister Mary Harney resulted in a restructuring of their pay and conditions earlier this year, but the think tank tasked with finding €5 billion in fresh spending cuts has put them in its sights again.
The group’s recommendations for what areas of Government spending need to be axed will go to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan this Wednesday and he is expected to present it to cabinet the following week.
Tensions have already emerged between the Finance Department and the Department of the Taoiseach over how the deeply controversial report should be handled.
The Finance Department is believed to be in favour of making the report, or at least the majority of it public, while the Taoiseach’s Department is concerned about a public backlash to its proposals which are believed to include a €2bn savaging of the welfare bill.
The Government may not relish a new row with consultants after the four year stand-off which saw an agreement, widely viewed as being generous to the consultants, reached in April.
The agreement resulted in consultants getting an average pay rise of €30,000, taking the average pay of a full-time senior doctor in the public health service to between €220,000 and €250,000.
An Bord Snip Nua is also expected to call for major staff reductions in the Health Service Executive to reduce the annual €16bn bill for the country’s public medical system.
The report will include more than 480 recommendations, some of which are expected to be too radical for the Government to risk implementing when the cuts are brought forward in the autumn.
Ms Harney is already in a tense stand-off with pharmacists over plans to cut their payments and is thought not to relish the prospect of another dispute with consultants.
Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin has already signalled that child allowance will be taxed from next January and the axe taken to a raft of benefits.
An Bord Snip Nua, chaired by economist Colin McCarthy, has been given the widest possible brief to find ways of slashing the budget in the face of the country needing to borrow €70m per day on the international money markets.
Opposition leaders have warned the Government not to scapegoat the poor and vulnerable in the search for cuts.
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