The head of the Health Service Executive Employers Agency has said he cannot understand why hospital consultants are objecting to a body which has determined their pay for years now, possibly determining the salaries they be paid for agreeing to new contracts.
Gerard Barry said the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service was the appropriate forum for determining pay for senior public servants, including hospital consultants, and this had been the case for a number of years. "I do not understand why they have an issue with it now," he said.
Unions representing consultants are due to meet with health service employers for further talks on a new contract this morning. However, both the Irish Hospital Consultants Association and the Irish Medical Organisation have warned there can be no substantive talks until agreement is reached on how any new contract they agree to is priced. The IHCA and IMO say the pay consultants receive for agreeing to new work practices should be agreed at the talks' table.
Mr Barry says employers are prepared to discuss every facet of a new contract including salary as part of the talks process, but that if agreement is not reached, the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service should decide the salaries to be paid.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the IHCA, said consultants could not agree to something without knowing what they would be paid for it. What health service employers were suggesting, he said, was "putting the cart before the horse".
Talks between the sides broke up two weeks ago over a dispute on the pricing issue. Since then, talks chairman Mark Connaughton SC has met the sides separately, but it is understood there is still no agreement on the pricing issue.
Fintan Hourihan, the IMO's director of industrial relations, said further progress could not be made until the pricing issue was resolved. He added that he would be protesting "in the strongest terms" at today's meeting over the decision by the HSE to abolish category II consultant contracts (which allow doctors carry out private practice in private hospitals) and the way it was announced.
The move was conveyed to the Dáil by Minister for Health Mary Harney a week ago, but the consultants unions had not been informed at the talks' table.