Hospital consultants - Prolonging the impasse will be futile

The ultimatum issued by Health Minister Mary Harney to consultants yesterday may reflect the Government’s frustration, and that of the public, at the total impasse on hospital consultants’ contracts, but in the meantime it is patients who have to endure the consequences of this long, drawn-out dispute.

She has warned them that unless there is a dramatic change in attitude over the weekend, she will bring proposals to Government the week after next to deal with the impasse.

Presumably, her megaphone diplomacy was aimed at members of the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA) who are holding an extraordinary general meeting tomorrow.

Obviously, they will discuss the issue of contracts, on which they are adamant they will not budge from their position, but also a motion of no confidence in the Health Executive Service (HSE).

The probability is that it will succeed if it is proposed but it would, like Ms Harney’s ultimatum and threat to appoint hundreds of consultants, only serve to exacerbate an already fraught situation.

There is much to commend in the suggested approach by the independent talks chairman, which basically amounts to both sides adopting a clean slate position and negotiations to be concluded within a particular period.

Senior Counsel Mark Connaughton said that before any talks could resume, there would have to be an unequivocal agreement that there would be unconditional negotiations for a defined period.

Both the Irish Medical Organisation and the HSE concur with his opinion, but the IHCA would not commit itself until after its meeting this weekend.

Hopefully, common sense will prevail at that meeting sufficiently to recognise that the issue will have to be resolved ultimately, and to prolong it would be futile and achieve nothing.

If, as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern asserted yesterday, the talks formed a crucial part of the Government’s reform programme, then it is certainly long beyond the point where an element of realism should be injected into them.

Neither would achieve anything by their actions except to polarise both sides, when what is badly needed at this juncture is that common ground be found from which they can proceed.

These talks have to be resumed because the stalemate is detrimental to the health service and is certainly not conducive to the well-being of those patients who need the attention the dispute is delaying for them.

Ms Harney averred she had a responsibility as the relevant minister to drive forward urgently needed reforms.

An intrinsic strand of that responsibility is the safety of hospital patients whose lives can currently be put at risk, not by their medical condition or the MRSA bug, but by over-worked doctors.

Professor Brendan Drumm, head of the HSE, admitted that non-consultant doctors can work up to 114 hours per week, which is totally unacceptable.

He said that patients are being put at “significant risk” because of the amount of overtime these doctors are working.

If, as Prof Drumm has said, pilot rosters were being tried out at nine hospitals but only because doctors insisted on receiving their previous earnings in order to co-operate, it should not be tolerated.