The Irish Medical Organisation is urging its non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) to accept the £60 million package on offer from the Health Service Employers Agency. The package is worth an extra £20,000 a year each to the 3,000 NCHDs.
The industrial relations director of the IMO, Mr Fintan Hourihan, said yesterday that the proposals were the first step towards tackling underlying problems of excessive working hours and lack of adequate training time.
The chief executive of the HSEA, Mr Gerard Barry, said they had found ways of stretching funding a little further. He was hopeful that industrial relations in the health services were entering a new phase.
About £45 million is accounted for by the new agreement on over time, which sees the end of the practice whereby the longer doctors worked the lower the rate they were paid.
With the exception of doctors rostered "on call" but located "off site", they will be paid time-and-a-quarter for the first 15 hours' overtime and time-and-a-half for any hours over that. Sundays and public holidays will be paid at double time.
A training grant worth £3,000 a year will be payable for attending courses and other approved educational activities. Examination fees will also be reimbursed.
Relocation fees worth about £1,000 will be paid to NCHDs moving between posts.
NCHDs working shifts in accident and emergency (A&E) departments will be paid at time-and-one-sixth in recognition of the unsocial hours involved.
One major concession was the provision of a £9,000 allowance to GP registrars. Until now hospital doctors training in community-based general practices received a maximum of the basic 39-hour-week rate.
Talks on reducing the 65-hour week are to begin next month.