HSE: D-day for contract talks

HOSPITAL consultants have been warned today is D-day for completion of talks on a new work contract.

If agreement is not reached today, health service managers have threatened to unilaterally impose a revised contract and press ahead with recruitment of new consultants under revised terms.

In an effort to bring the four-year-plus saga to a close, the secretary-general of the Department of Health Michael Scanlan, and Health Service Executive chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm, will sit in on negotiations for the first time.

It is understood they will not leave the negotiating table until some decision is reached.

Yesterday the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association said it would resist any attempts by health service managers to impose a new contract if agreement is not reached today.

General secretary Finbarr Fitzpatrick criticised the deadline to end talks.

“This selecting of target dates to reach agreement has had an undermining and disruptive effect on the talks,” he said.

It is the third deadline set for completion of the talks.

A deadline of last December had to be pushed back to this month when a key member of the consultants’ negotiating team was absent through illness. Prior to that, a deadline of March 2007 also came and went.

It is understood the sticking points continue to be issues surrounding public and private practice, remuneration and the manner in which clinical directors are appointed. According to the consultants’ association, management want to select clinical directors rather than follow the existing process whereby clinical staff nominate colleagues.

It is understood a €235,000 salary is on offer to consultants who commit to working exclusively in public hospitals (type A contract).

The delay in reaching agreement means not one of 68 consultant posts, advertised by the HSE last April, has been filled.