‘Unfairly treated’ Asian doctors to sue

A group of Asian doctors, enticed to Ireland as part of a high-profile and expensive recruitment campaign, is suing the HSE, the Department of Health, and the Medical Council for unlawful treatment.

The doctors wrote to the HSE, the department, and the council last month claiming that “discrimination and unlawful treatment has been an ongoing pattern” since they came to work in Ireland in 2011.

Dr Imran Habib, a spokesperson for 260 doctors from India and Pakistan, said they had filed the lawsuit because they felt badly treated. They are being represented by Dublin legal firm Hayes Solicitors.

The doctors, recruited as part of a €2m campaign to shore up staffing shortfalls here, came to Ireland in the hope of developing their careers, Dr Habib said. Many left jobs at home and brought family with them.

They were put in a specially created supervised division which allowed them to be registered in council-approved posts for a maximum of two years, working under supervision only. The clock runs out on those contracts in July.

Dr Habib said that despite repeated inquiries to the Medical Council for permission to sit an exam to allow them get on the general register of doctors at the end of their contracts and continue working here (known as PRES or Pre-Registration Evaluation Scheme), the first step in that process only took place last June.

In December, the doctors got letters from the council reminding them they needed to take the PRES exams in order to remain on.

Dr Habib said six months was too short a timeframe for doctors to complete the PRES exams. He claimed the doctors had been shabbily treated from day one.

“We came here thinking we were coming as NCHDs [non-consultant hospital doctors, known as junior doctors] only to find out we were in our own special division. Many of us were left in limbo for two or three months when we arrived because the HSE and the council hadn’t planned the process properly and there were delays in processing paperwork,” he said.

The doctors in the supervised division felt unfairly discriminated against because, he said, after working here for two years they faced being “offloaded like a liability rather than an asset”.

They were further infuriated by new council rules that will allow Pakistani doctors who did their internships after 2008 to come here and apply directly for general registration while those in the supervised division with two years’ experience cannot, Dr Habib said.

Head of registration at the council, Philip Brady, has written to Dr Habib saying they are working with the HSE to “operate an efficient process for doctors seeking to transfer from the supervised division”.

He said the doctors concerned were placed on notice of this process last year.

A HSE spokesperson said it was working with the council over appropriate registration of the doctors.