Consultant posts likely to take at least a year to fill, CAG study shows

THE 68 new consultant posts advertised yesterday as part of the Government’s plan to boost the number of hospital specialists are likely to take at least a year to fill.

Applications were invited for the positions in what is to be the first of several hundred posts promised by the Government over the next few years.

But a study by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) found that since 2004 the average time between approval being granted for a new post and the post being filled was 379 days.

Health Service Executive chief executive, Professor Brendan Drumm, echoed that view.

He was commenting on the breakdown of talks on a new consultants contract after the Irish Hospital Consultants Association pulled out of negotiations over the decision to press ahead with advertising the new posts in advance of agreement on their terms of employment.

He said there was time to resume negotiations and resolve the differences because it would be close to a year before anyone would be recruited.

The urgent need for a new contract was illustrated in the CAG’s report which found that a row has been ongoing over the number of hours consultants are meant to work since the existing contract came into effect ten years ago.

The Department of Health said the 1997 contract stated that consultants must work 39 hours — including six hours of unscheduled activities — but the consultants maintain they only have to work 33 hours.

“This is a fundamental difference of interpretation that has never been reconciled in the course of the contract implementation,” said CAG, John Purcell.

The decade-old contract also requires consultants to provide work schedules to their hospital managers setting out their weekly duties to prove they had met their contractual obligations and demonstrate if and when they exceeded them.

The CAG, however, found widespread neglect of the requirement by both consultants and managers.

“Most hospitals did not request updated schedules from consultants. There was a general lack of information available in hospitals to enable managers to satisfy themselves that consultants’ contractual commitments were being discharged.

“Although there was a belief among hospital managers that many consultants exceed their contractual commitment this can not be substantiated in the absence of reliable records.”

Mr Purcell also found that the requirement in the 1997 contract that hospitals conduct clinical audits to monitor the medical practices of their consultants was largely ignored.