Last-ditch talks in bid to resolve doctors' dispute

ELEVENTH-HOUR talks will take place today at the Labour Relations Commission in a bid to settle the long-running row over hospital doctors' working hours.

Doctors' working hours must be cut from an average of 70 hours a week to 58 if Ireland is comply with the European Working Time Directive, which takes effect on August 1. Health Minister Micheál Martin confirmed last week that Ireland would not be compliant with the directive when it comes into force on August 1.

About 60% of the health service specialties will be complying with the directive, but the country's 4,000 junior doctors are opposed to the plan by hospital management to introduce a new rostering system that would see their pay fall.

The Health Service Employers Agency (HSEA) wants to introduce a 24-hour day, seven-day-a-week rostering system as part of their strategy to implement the directive.

Mr Martin stressed that no unilateral action would be taken and every effort would be made to try to resolve the issue through the industrial relations process.

"Patient care must take precedence over everything else," he insisted. The Irish Medical Organisation's industrial relations director Fintan Hourihan said a national template would have to be agreed on working hours for doctors that would allow hospitals to introduce changes appropriate to their needs.

"Patient care cannot be compromised by any of these changes and both the training and supervision of the doctors must be ensured as well," he said yesterday.

But, he admitted, getting agreement would not be easy because there was a "fair gap" between both sides.

Meanwhile, Irish Hospital Consultants' Association assistant general secretary Donal Duffy said they would be taking part in local discussions on the implementation of the directive, but there was no question of consultants altering their existing working arrangements. Consultants are contracted to deliver their services during the normal working five-day week and are on-call outside of that. Normally, it is junior doctors who are first on-call and consultants are only called when their opinion is needed in any given case.

"We do not envisage a situation arising where consultants would be first on-call due to the absence of non-consultant hospital doctors," he stressed.