€250k salary 'won’t entice people to system that is falling apart,' says consultants body

The proposed salary of €250,000 for consultants working in public hospitals “won’t entice people home to a system that is falling apart,” the vice president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association has said.

Dr Laura Durcan told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that while the increase was welcome, “the real question will be will we get bums on seats for those posts?”

Yesterday the Government announced that hospital consultants who commit to working only in public hospitals will be offered a salary of up to €250,000. From next summer all medical specialists will be appointed under a new Sláintecare consultant contract which will not allow private practice.

Dr Durcan said the announcement was the first acknowledgement of the crisis in the health system which had resulted in 500 posts not being filled.

She pointed out that Ireland has half the number of consultants that it should have.

We have 40% less than Scotland which has the same population and they have twice the number of beds.

The Government has agreed to appoint a net 1,000 additional hospital consultants over the next 10 years. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said doctors wanting to become consultants, or those medical specialists already in place, could opt for the new contractual arrangements.

The new salaries would apply to those consultants who gave a commitment to work in public hospitals only and “dedicated themselves to our public health services”. Mr Varadkar said the new initiative represented “a major change”.

Dr Durcan asked how the Government is going to find the funding for the €650m required to fund the increase in salary for public consultants.

The health system is already in crisis, Accident and Emergency departments are “miserable,” she added.

“This is taking a huge chunk of funding out of a hard-pressed system.”

Dr Durcan also expressed disappointment that the IHCA had not been consulted prior to the announcement. “It was not discussed with us before hand.”

There are “so many things that we need to get to,” she said of the health system.

The rheumatologist added that she was also “very upset” by a comment made by the Minister for Health Simon Harris when he said that consultants in Limerick had been “too busy” with private patients to deal with an elderly patient.

The issue in Limerick was a lack of beds, she said. Consultants in Limerick see more patients per head than any other consultants around the country.