Varadkar offer fails to halt planned consultant strike

Planned strike action in the new year by consultants is to go ahead, despite a move by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to offer them up to €250,000-a-year public- only contracts.

The Taoiseach told the Dáil that the Government has agreed to appoint 1,000 additional hospital consultants over the next decade. The salary scale for the new public-only posts will range from €180,000 to €220,000 now, increasing to €250,000 next year.

Despite the initiative, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) hit out at Mr Varadkar for the way he announced it in the Dáil instead of in face-to-face talks with medic representatives. The IMO said he needs to sit down with the organisation and demonstrate a “real willingness” to resolve the dispute.

The offer from the Taoiseach came just hours after consultants voted to strike over pay and recruitment and retention issues. A spokesperson for the IMO said: “The IMO notes the proposal to offer public-only consultant contracts to consultants.

“Clearly (Tuesday’s) overwhelming vote by IMO consultant and NCHD members to vote in favour of strike action is engaging the Taoiseach in this crisis.

“However, the Taoiseach must understand that to resolve this issue will require negotiations with the IMO and not unilateral pronouncements in the Dáil.

In the absence of such negotiations, our plans for industrial action in the new year continue.

The IMO said the root of the current crisis goes back to a unilateral decision by a Fine Gael-led government in 2012 to slash pay for new consultants.

That decision led directly to the current trolley crisis and the waiting list crisis because it has caused a shortage of desperately needed consultants to see and treat patients.

“Lest we forget there are currently circa 540 unfilled consultant posts across the sector in Ireland,” said the IMO statement. “Having caused this crisis by a failure to sit down with the IMO, it is ironic the Taoiseach thinks he can solve it now by acting unilaterally again.

“He cannot. He needs to sit down with the IMO and have the good sense to acknowledge the scale of the crisis facing us and demonstrate a real willingness to work with us on finding workable proposals to resolve it.

“It is good to see the Taoiseach engaging on this issue. Now let’s see him engage seriously with consultants and NCHDs to resolve this dispute.”

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association slammed the new contract offer as a proposal that has failed to work on two previous occasions.

It will “create an annual funding hole of €650m in cash-starved public hospitals”, it said.

While welcoming the Government’s acknowledgement that there is a consultant recruitment crisis, the association also warned that the resulting funding gap will “wreak havoc on patients”.