Consultants to receive up to €40k in back pay
During contract negotiations last year, the Health Service Executive (HSE) indicated that any consultant who signed up to the new contract by August 31, 2008, would have the new salary applied retrospectively from June 1, 2008. For some consultants, where extenuating circumstances applied, this deadline was extended to September 30, 2008.
For consultants who delayed signing up to the end of the year, the new salary will be applied from their sign-up date.
The retrospection means if they signed up on time, a consultant working full-time in the public system under the old contract, where his/her salary was approximately €190,000, and who can expect to earn about €250,000 under the new contract, is now owed the difference between the old salary and the new, backdated to last June.
Up to 80% of the country’s 1,800 hospital consultants have signed up to the new deal, with approximately one third committed to working full-time in the public hospital system.
Their basic salary is €250,000. Another one third will spend 80% of their time dealing with public patients and 20% with private patients on the public hospital campus or in co-located hospitals. Their basic is €220,000. The remainder are signed up to a contract which allows doctors in the public system treat patients outside the public hospital campus. Their basic salary is €200,000.
Consultants who did not opt for a new contract are owed pay increases of 7.3%, backdated to September 2007, recommended by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration.
The Irish Hospital Consultant’s Association said they have received no indication yet from the HSE as to when the monies owed will be paid. Assistant general secretary Donal Duffy said they expected the new salaries to be paid shortly.
Labour Senator Alan Kelly said there were serious questions to be asked as to how the Department of Health and the HSE could afford to pay such money.
“Is it acceptable that consultants are on such savage money at a time when the Government is putting such pressure on public and private sector workers who are on modest pay?” Mr Kelly asked.
Mr Kelly, who is Labour’s European election candidate in Ireland South, raised the matter in the Senate recently, asking if the Government had examined monies due to the consultants when it was looking at ways to save money.
He claimed some consultants were due back money of up to €100,000.
A statement from the Department of Health said Minister Mary Harney had recently met with the IHCA to “discuss progress in the implementation of new contractual arrangements for medical consultants”.
The statement said it was “not the practice of the minister or the department to comment on industrial relations issues which have not yet reached a conclusion”.
A statement from the HSE said it was “concluding this process by February 21 and would report subsequently to the Department of Health and Government with a recommendation for payment as appropriate”.
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