'Clinical and economic insanity': Hospital consultants hit out at minister's push for weekend work

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has made it a pillar of her tenure as health minister to drive consultants towards working more weekend hours.

Irish hospital consultants have lashed out at health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill’s push to make them work more weekend shifts, decrying the move as “clinical and economic insanity”.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said forcing consultants to work on Saturdays would cause operational difficulty on Mondays, when patient demand is typically highest.

About 70% of consultants working in Irish hospitals have signed a new public-only consultant contract, which pays €231,000-€277,000 a year. Consultants can be asked to work Monday-Saturday as part of a core 37-hour work week.

Recent figures from the HSE show one in seven consultants were working on Saturdays.

Ms MacNeill has made it a pillar of her tenure as health minister to drive consultants towards working more weekend hours.

The minister had given the consultants a deadline of the end of July to increase uptake in weekend shifts, and previously said there were “a series of tools” to escalate the situation if consultants did not comply.

IHCA president Gabrielle Colleran said the minister’s push for weekend work represented a “politically driven illusion of progress”.

"Shifting a severely scarce clinical workforce from high-productivity Mondays to low-support Saturdays, where basic access to diagnostics, allied health, and community step-down beds is virtually non-existent, is bordering on clinical and economic insanity,” Ms Colleran said.

Ms Colleran claimed the root of issues in the country's healthcare system was a severe lack of working consultants. 

The average number of working consultants in Ireland is about a third lower than the EU average, according to IHCA.

“If the minister wants a functional six- or seven-day health service, she must first provide the beds, the diagnostics, and the support staff required to run it,” Ms Colleran said.

“Forcing frontline clinicians into unworkable weekend schedules is a political distraction that treats patient safety as an afterthought.”