Nursing and other unions across the health sector will receive letters today asking them to support the industrial action being taken by hospital consultants.
The consultants are engaging in a wave of industrial action, which began yesterday with them withdrawing from administrative type duties and it will escalate in three weeks when they plan to provide emergency services only at all hospitals, public and private. The protest is at the introduction of a new insurance scheme, which does not cover them for claims arising from past treatments which they are as yet unaware of. They say this could leave them personally liable for claims and they could face financial ruin.
The action by the 1,500 members of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association is set to be supported by the Irish Medical Organisation which has about 600 consultant members. Consultant members of the IMO are being notified today that they too should refuse to take part in voluntary non contractual duties such as participating in health service reform committees.
If the dispute is not resolved by Monday, the IMO plans to ballot its members on withdrawing from contractual duties. A spokeswoman said the form of industrial action it would take had yet to be worked out.
However, it hopes serious forms of action will be avoided. It called on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to seek an urgent convening of the National Implementation Body, in accordance with the provisions contained within Sustaining Progress, to investigate the basis of finding a resolution.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, have criticised the consultants for taking industrial action. For people to be threatening to withdraw services from patients over insurance issues is just not acceptable. They should resolve it," Mr Ahern said.
The INO has said it respects the decision of the consultants to take action and it will advise its members to do nothing that would undermine their protest.
The consultants' key concern about the new insurance scheme called enterprise liability is that it does not cover them for past events. Mr Martin says any claims arising out of past events should be covered by the insurance bodies which accepted premia from the consultants at the time of the event, either the Medical Defence Union (MDU) or the Medical Protection Society. The problem is the MDU has said it did not take in enough in premiums over the years to be able to cover all Irish obstetricians for past liabilities and it can give no cast iron guarantee that it will be able to cover other specialities for past liabilities either. The MDU wants to transfer its historic liabilities to the State Claims Agency which is now insuring consultants but has only offered €60 million in return. Mr Martin says this is not enough as the true cost of claims could be €400 million or more.