Prison doctors threaten to quit in care row

Doctors serving the country's jails threatened mass resignation tonight unless the Prison Service meets demands to improve health care for inmates.

With the crisis entering its fourth week, prison doctors claimed strike would continue until their wishes were met.

The Irish Medical Organisation called on the prison service to implement the 2001 Olden Report into care standards in the State’s jails .

The report recommended improved pay and conditions for doctors, secretarial and administrative support and better access to psychiatric and counselling services.

The IPS offered pay increases of up to €95,000 for three full time doctors, but the IMO are holding out for as a much as €135,000.

A spokesman for the IPS said the discussions before the Labour Relations Committee were always about pay and conditions and the further demands were based on a three-year-old report.

He added: “We have made quite considerable progress and many of the conditions are not directly related to doctors, for example psychology. The core of the whole thing is pay, they want an increase in pay.”

Calls have also been made for access to local psychiatric units and for better regulation of methadone treatment services in jails.

Doctors claimed the IPS had failed to address their concerns over pay and conditions, care facilities and health standards for the last three years.

Dr Martin Daly, chairman of the IMO GP committee, said: “It is an ethical issue and is pointed to in stark reality in the Amnesty International report.”

Amnesty’s annual report for 2004 said patients were often held in unfurnished padded cells and psychiatric care was “anti-therapeutic” and “inhuman and degrading”.

The report also pointed to “appalling” sanitary facilities in some prisons and noted ill-treatment, violence and bullying among staff and inmates.

Dr Daly said: “We hope that this Director General, Sean Aylward, is positive or has the interests of modern medical care and prisoners’ health in mind, because if he is then we would expect a positive response.

“If not then we know this is a pay and conditions issue and doctors will consider mass resignation from the Irish Prison Service.”

Dr Daly said doctors deferred a decision to withdraw from the prison service pending correspondence from the IMO to the Labour Relations Commission.

With doctor’s services halted, only emergency support is available in the country’s 16 institutions.

Army medics were drafted into jails last week to provide much needed cover, but Justice Minister Michael McDowell warned this was placing pressure on their abilities to look after soldiers.