Any junior doctor whose hours are not reduced to an average of 58 hours a week in line with a new EU directive from the beginning of next month will receive the backing of the Irish Medical Organisation if they wish to take a case against their employer for flouting the new regulations.
Employers face significant fines for every day the European Working Time Directive is breached.
The IMO's director of industrial relations, Mr Fintan Hourihan, yesterday confirmed his organisation's support for junior doctors who sought to have their rights upheld under the directive, which becomes law on August 1st. He confirmed the strategy in the face of claims that the IMO was now the main obstacle to implementing the directive.
The chief executive of the Health Service Employers Agency, Mr Gerard Barry, said: "The biggest single impediment to us complying with the EU WTD from August 1st is our inability to get an agreement with the IMO to a change in the current rostering system for junior doctors.
"The IMO are adamant that the current system of doctors being rostered between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday must continue. It is impossible to reduce doctors hours if we remain steadfast to the old rostering system," he said.
He said the doctors wanted to be paid overtime for any work they did outside the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m..
Mr Barry said the junior doctors earned an average of €50,000 a year in overtime and it was quite clear they did not want to "be parted with those very high earnings".
Mr Hourihan said the issue was not about pay. It was about safe rostering and ensuring junior doctors received appropriate training under the supervision of consultants between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
He told RTÉ's Morning Ireland that some rosters which had been drawn up to allow the directive to be implemented were unsafe, unworkable "and in some cases are reckless and I think patient care is going to be compromised if these rosters are given effect". They were drawn up without consultation with the IMO.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said this was because the IMO would not engage with employers on the issue.
He said there was no way all hospitals would be able to reduce junior doctors hours sufficiently to comply with the directive in three weeks time, but seeking leave from the EU to delay its implementation was not an option.
The director of surgical affairs at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Prof Arthur Tanner, said he believed the directive should be introduced "more gradually than by big bang on August 1st".
He said a majority of hospitals did not have sufficient numbers of junior doctors and consultants to be able to introduce the directive "safely" in three weeks time. He predicted that elective surgery would have to be cancelled.
Already the State's neurosurgeons have said some patients with brain injury will have to be transported abroad if the directive is introduced, because there won't be sufficient manpower to care for them here.
Mr Martin insisted patient care would not be compromised. "The overriding principle from our side is that patient service levels and care have to be maintained at existing levels," he said.
Talks on a new contract for junior doctors or NCHDs (non-consultant hospital doctors) have been taking place at the Labour Relations Commission since February.
The doctors have already been offered "double digit pay increases" but on the issue of new rosters, the sides are deadlocked.