Doctors at the Mater hospital in Dublin are expected to vote overwhelmingly for strike action in a ballot due to conclude tomorrow. They are seeking payment of £250,000 in overtime, some of it due for over two years.
The director of industrial relations at the Irish Medical Organisation, Mr Fintan Hourihan, said if the vote was for industrial action, strike notice would be served for the second week in October. This is just seven days before the threatened national nurses' strike.
Non-consultant hospital doctors in St Colmcille's, Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, are also balloting for industrial action on local issues. These include overtime payments and poor accommodation. The outcome of their ballot should be known on Friday.
If neither dispute is resolved quickly it could mean that two of Dublin's major acute hospitals would face closure as NCHDs and nurses simultaneously took industrial action in mid-October.
Mr Hourihan said that the disputes were only two of a number simmering in the hospital system because of problems implementing last year's "peace formula" aimed at averting a national strike by NCHDs. He was critical, too, of the exclusion of NCHDs from the Organisation of Working Time Act. He believes a special case now exists for compensating doctors financially.
Mr Hourihan said he hoped that talks under way with management to review working hours for NCHDs and the deliberations of the Medical Manpower Forum could be concluded quickly. The target date for the review is December.
However, he warned that interim arrangements for payment of overtime and other issues such as accommodation threatened to cause serious disputes like those pending at the Mater and St Colmcille's.
The IMO is meeting the British Medical Association next week to discuss progress in their respective campaigns to reduce doctors' working hours.
Both organisations have already agreed to mount a joint campaign in Northern Ireland to persuade local MEPs to join the lobby for reducing doctors' working hours. Britain and Ireland are the only EU member-states to continue excluding hospital doctors from the Working Time Directive.