Wednesday 29th April 2015. The IMO calls on health service management to bring to an end the inordinate delays in implementing the January 2015 agreement on new entrant Consultant career structure and salary. With an unprecedented three hundred Consultant vacancies in the public hospital system, health service management have chosen to engage in bureaucratic point scoring instead of using the agreement to find a solution to this crisis.
The agreement provides for the appointment of Consultants at salary levels determined by their qualifications and experience as agreed by the Incremental Credit Committee. Instead of using this agreement to attract high calibre Consultants into public hospital posts, including those who have left Ireland in recent years, health service management have used the Department of Health and HSE nominated non-medical members of the committee to block progress.

Once again we have an example of bureaucratic posturing preventing Consultants from taking up posts in the health service. The treatment of Consultants by health service management is intolerable and many have already voted with their boarding passes making it more difficult to attract suitably qualified doctors to Consultant posts. The inordinate delay in clarifying the position is doing untold damage to the health service and to patients waiting for treatment. This is in marked contrast to other English speaking health services who welcome Irish qualified doctors with open arms.

This is an unacceptable situation when there are 400,000 people waiting for a first appointment at a Consultant led clinic. The situation also increases the pressure on the capacity of the system to deal with the ED crisis when a recommendation of the Task Force highlighted the need for more Consultants in EDs and in AMAUs.

The IMO is calling on the Ministers for Health and Public Expenditure and Reform to take immediate steps to address this impasse and clarify the pay position for newly appointed consultants if and when they take up a Consultant post in Ireland.

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