Dispute to go on as consultants reject HSE pay offer

ANY chance of a quick resolution to contract negotiations with hospital consultants were dashed yesterday after their representative associations have rejected the latest pay offer.

The Irish Hospital Consultant Association (IHCA) last night described the draft employment contract, which they received from the Health Service Executive late on Tuesday evening, as being “less attractive” than the document they rejected nearly six months ago. The adoption of a new consultant contract is pivotal to reforming hospital services, according to the Department of Health.

In the statement, IHCA Secretary General Finbarr Fitzpatrick questioned “whether the HSE and the Department of Health and Children actually want to negotiate a new contract now”.

Their negotiating team reviewed the contract yesterday while the other consultant representative group, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) will discuss the document over the next 48 hours before meeting the talks chairman, Mark Connaughton on Friday.

“Hours of work, the role of the consultant as a patient advocate, co-location and changes to eligibility regulations are just some of the issues that concern us,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.

“The Irish healthcare system has recruited and retained world-class consultants. The proposals currently presented will make that much more difficult in the future. The Association will give a detailed response to the independent chairperson outlining what we believe would be acceptable to consultants, whilst taking account of the change of agenda of the Government.”

The HSE draft contract took the consultant organisations by surprise as up to Wednesday the talks had been focused on drawing up a “heads of agreement” document — a move which generally precedes draft contracts.

“We haven’t formally reviewed the contract but issues of clinical independence, confidentiality, patient eligibility, team working and the draft on-call rota as well as the form of proposed weekend hours are just some of the issues that we could see problems with,” said IMO Industrial Relations Director Fintan Hourihan.

“Out of the blue, the HSE demands have increased hugely at a time when we should be concluding negotiations and not prolonging them.”

A HSE spokesman said they would not comment on the contract before both sides met again.

Consultant contract: the conditions

* The new consultant contract is based around a 39-hour week with three extra weekends proposed and an element of 24-hour cover.

* The solely public contract has a maximum salary of €216,000 while the public/private contract ranges from €175,000 to €190,000.

* Hospital consultants who remain on the existing mixed contract will earn between €156,000 and €171,000 a year.

* The 80:20 public/private mix in hospitals will be strictly enforced under the new plans, with consultants not getting paid if they try to put more private patients into public wards.