Consultants advised to forego up to €50k

The Labour Court has recommended hospital consultants forego up to €50,000 of overtime pay they are owed by the State.

The court recommended that a quarter of the historic overtime pay owed to the medics be withheld due to the HSE’s poor financial state.

In some cases where a consultant earns €200,000 a year, this would mean he or she would lose out on €50,000.

Under an arrangement between the department and consultants, known as “historic rest days”, some consultants were entitled to take off their last year prior to retirement on full pay in lieu of overtime worked earlier. Others chose to work for that final year and were therefore entitled to double pay.

Due to the HSE’s worsening financial situation, it had sought to have these entitlements halved.

The Irish Medical Organisation said the move would breach contractual entitlements.

Martin Varley, the secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, (IHCA) said they will be assessing the recommendations.

He said they had sought a meeting with CEO of the HSE, Tony O’Brien, on the outcome of the IHCA survey on proposed reforms for consultants.

Labour Court Deputy Chair Brendan Hayes said a balance had to be struck between the rights of consultants affected and the financial reality facing the HSE, the State, and taxpayers.

He found that the HSE had made a reasonable case for reducing the accrued leave entitlement but that halving it would be excessive. He recommended overtime backlogs be reduced by a quarter, and that the deadline for when the leave could be taken be extended from 2018 to 2020.

The Labour Court also addressed the issue of compensatory rest days for on-call and call-out duties.

Mr Hayes recommended the on-call and call-out arrangements for consultants be brought into line with standard arrangements for other professional grades in the public health services.

This would involve linking compensatory rest to actual call-out incidents.

The HSE had also sought to eliminate second-opinion allowances for psychiatrists whereby they were paid up to €500 per opinion.

However, Mr Hayes said that as both parties insist on describing the payment as “an allowance”, it must be dealt with in the same manner as all others under discussion between the parties to Croke Park.