The Health Service Executive has agreed to go back into talks with unions representing hospital consultants in a last-ditch attempt to agree a new contract with their members.
The move, agreed at a board meeting of the HSE yesterday, comes in the wake of a decision by the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association last Sunday to resume talks "unconditionally for a defined period".
The Irish Medical Organisation, which also represents consultants, has said it too would be agreeable to further talks on that basis.
The HSE said last night it had accepted the approach advocated by the independent chairman of the talks, Mark Connaughton SC, that there would be unconditional negotiations and for a defined period.
The focus is now likely to turn to what each side means by "unconditional" and if their interpretations differ, it could be difficult for the talks to actually get off the ground.
The HSE's decision comes a week after Mr Connaughton made it clear, in correspondence, that there was a lack of trust between the HSE and the consultant representative bodies and that the talks had made no progress.
He added that before any resumption could take place there would have to be "an unequivocal agreement between the parties that there would be unconditional negotiations for a defined period of time".
After his correspondence was circulated Minister for Health Mary Harney said she was going to press ahead with plans to impose a new contract on consultants if they did not negotiate one within a tight timeframe. She said there had been endless talks that hadn't produced a new contract, which she regards as essential for health service reform. Time for talking was running out, she said.
She still plans to bring to Cabinet next Tuesday an outline timetable and timeframe for the introduction of a new contract for new consultants coming into the Irish healthcare system. Some 1,500 such consultants need to be recruited, she said.
Last night the IHCA secretary general, Finbarr Fitzpatrick, welcomed the HSE's decision to return to talks. He is due to meet the chief executive of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, and director of the HSE's national hospitals office John O'Brien next Monday.
"We will be approaching the meeting in a very constructive manner and with every intention of playing our part to assist in removing obstacles that have delayed substantive negotiations," he said.
He added that to comment further at this stage would be inappropriate.
Fintan Hourihan of the IMO also welcomed the fact that the talks are to resume.
Earlier yesterday the Tánaiste Michael McDowell told hospital consultants and doctors they would not hijack Government plans for health service reform and warned them to face up to their responsibilities on the issue.
"You can't just appear on TV looking concerned wearing a white coat and saying that there aren't adequate resources if you don't take your own part in the administration of those resources," he said.
He said there had been a "phoney war" for too long in which some people "pose as being on the patients' side and say the administration is against the patients, when that is not the case.
"We have to have a different approach to medicine. It has to be teamwork and sharing of responsibility and those people who think they can produce an off-the-shelf crisis to produce a change in the public mood and distract people from the need for fundamental reform are very, very mistaken as they will find out in short order," he added.