The prospect of industrial action in hospitals across the State grew more likely on Saturday after the Council of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) unanimously backed non-consultant hospital doctors' in their attempts to have a "living out allowance" abolished in 2012 reinstated.
Saturday’s meeting was held against a backdrop of the Labour Court’s proposal to increase rent allowance for gardaí, which the IMO said was very similar to the living-out allowance abolished for doctors recruited after 2012.
In a statement, the IMO said that while it recognised negotiations on the living out allowance and other issues around training were due to take place next week, it fully backed its colleagues “in taking industrial action, up to and including strike action, to resolve matters should the negotiations not yield an adequate response from Government”.
The IMO Council accused the HSE and the Department of Health of refusing to negotiate over the past number of years and it strongly criticised the Government "for policies that are endangering our health services and patient safety with a health system that has too few consultants, increasing trends of emigration amongst our non-consultant hospital doctors, GP services at crisis point and inadequate public health planning".
The Council said direct consequences to patients of Government policies were “increasing waiting times, too few hospital beds, cancellation of procedures, persistent overcrowding in our Emergency Departments and inadequate resources to provide care at GP level”.
IMO president Dr John Duddy said the Government's pay policy had "led directly to the inability of our health services to retain or recruit doctors."
He said there were already “too few doctors” in the Republic and the number was “insufficient to deliver adequate services to patients”.
He accused the Government of consistently ignoring “the fact that if you breach contracts and deliberately create a policy that disrespects and devalues doctors they will simply choose to work for countries that value them and allow them to do the work for which they have trained”.
He added that doctors had been prepared to take cuts during the recession as were other members of the public services but claimed that the cuts applied to members of the medical profession “and the consistent breaches of contracts were over and above those suffered by other public service employees”.
