PAY INCREASES for hospital consultants of between €50,000 and €60,000, scheduled under a new contract, are not to be paid this month.
The planned increases, which would bring consultants’ salaries up to €240,000, form part of a new contract which would see senior hospital doctors engage in significant work practice changes.
The Department of Health said last month that Minister for Health Mary Harney had sanctioned the payments for consultants who had signed the new contract on foot of a verification process carried out by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
The new salaries were be backdated to the beginning of January and it had been expected that the increases would be paid in March.
However, the HSE yesterday said it had not yet received formal approval to pay the increases from the Department of Finance.
It said it would take about three weeks to amend its payroll systems to take account of the pay increases.
It said that even if it received the formal approval next week, it would not be able to pay the increases this month.
Asked about the status of the pay increases for consultants earlier this week, the department said that “nothing could be ruled in or ruled out for consideration” in the supplementary budget to be introduced next month.
It said the Minister had approved the verification process for the new contract and sanctioned the new payments. However, it said that since the start of the year, the country’s fiscal circumstance had deteriorated rapidly.
The Department of Health said about 80 per cent of consultants had signed up for the new contract.
The implementation of the contract, which took four years to negotiate, will cost about €140 million this year.
As part of the new contract, hospital consultants will work a longer week spread over an extended day. They will also be rostered for duties at weekends.
In addition, they will work within teams under new clinical directors.
There will also be new restrictions on private practice in public hospitals.
“The implications for the health sector are that reformed ways of working – such as the new consultants’ contract – are all the more critical, so as to achieve more for patients with a given level of overall resources,” the department said.
The move to pay the increased salaries has been criticised recently by the Opposition and privately by unions representing other health sector staff.
