MINISTER FOR Health James Reilly has said he is far more interested in securing increased productivity from hospital consultants than he is in cutting their pay.
He said by increased productivity he meant more patients being treated more quickly.
“It would give us all a nice warm political feeling to take €50 million from consultants but would it give us what we want which is more patients treated, an end to long waits on trolleys and for in-patient treatment or for out-patient appointments?”
The Minister was speaking in response to comments made by the former head of human resources in the Health Service Executive Seán McGrath.
Mr McGrath confirmed in an interview with The Irish Times yesterday that up to 500 consultants were receiving more than the Government’s official pay ceiling of €200,000 for public service staff.
Mr McGrath revealed that one senior doctor had received more than €400,000 from the public health system.
Dr Reilly said he would certainly support the view that hospital consultants needed to be doing more in the public service. He said they needed to be available at weekends to discharge patients and to interpret diagnostic test results.
The Minister said this was already happening with some consultants coming into hospitals at weekends to do ward rounds to discharge patients. However, this needed to be formalised. “An awful lot of good people are doing an awful lot of work and they need to be commended. But there are a number of people who are not.
“Anybody operating outside the rules will feel the full heat of this ministry and of my department.”
Separately, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said it would never accept split shifts for nurses. It said the issue had not been raised with the union.
Split shifts involve staff working for a number of hours in one part of the day and completing their working commitments later in the evening or at night. Mr McGrath had suggested HSE management would like to introduce a split-shift system for nurses.
Meanwhile it is understood the HSE has told the Department of Health that the average salary paid to hospital consultants of about €180,000, before allowances, is higher than that paid to similar doctors in many countries abroad.
The HSE said that, in the UK, figures produced by the NHS indicated consultants could earn a basic salary of £74,504-£100,466 per year, depending on length of service. However, it said local and national clinical excellence awards may be paid in addition, subject to necessary criteria being met.
The HSE document said that in other EU states, consultant salaries are “typically less than €100,000” and in Australia the base pay for consultants ranged from €105,000 to €210,000.
In the US, it said, average pay for medical specialists stood at €140,000 but there was greater scope for higher earnings.
The HSE said the average consultant in Ireland was paid a core salary of €180,000. It said 55 consultants also got a clinical director’s allowance of €46,000.