Consultants set to reject offer of €205,000 salary

HOSPITAL consultants are set to reject an improved annual salary of €205,000 to work exclusively in the public system under a revised contract.

Details of the salary scales which form part of the proposed contract were revealed for the first time yesterday during talks to agree a new deal between the HSE and the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA).

Two types of contract are on offer attracting two different salary scales. The first, referred to as “Type A” will be available to consultants with no rights to private practice. The starting salary for these consultants will be €180,000 rising to €205,000 within five years on foot of €5,000 increments for each of the first five years.

The second salary scale, referred to as “Type B”, will be available to consultants who spend one fifth of their practice time seeing fee-paying patients on-site. This salary scale starts at €160,000 and rises to €185,000 within five years with €5,000 increments for each of the first five years.

Under existing contracts, consultants working full time in the public system earn €186,922. Consultants who have private practice rights earn sums ranging from €143,738 to €178,429, depending on whether their private work is on or off site and depending on which HSE area they work in.

These figures do not include on-call or emergency call-out fees. A consultant can earn almost €15,000 from on-call fees and a maximum of €23,000 per annum in emergency call-outs.

Yesterday IHCA general secretary Finbarr Fitzpatrick said the new offer was unlikely to be accepted.

“It would seem that they (the HSE/Department of Health) are expecting consultants to work longer hours for a lesser salary. We have a meeting of our contract consultative committee next Tuesday and we will be formally responding after that.”

Currently consultants work a 33-hour week, from Monday to Friday, on-call at the weekends. The new contract would mean working a 39-hour week over seven days, including the weekend, from 7am to 10pm.

The Government has set a deadline of April 17 for agreement to be reached — at which point it will impose new contracts — but the IHCA has said this deadline is unachievable. The IHCA said no progress had been made on a clause in the new contract which would prevent consultants speaking out on behalf of patients without the permission of hospital management.