Questions and Answers
Who is involved?
The dispute is between the State's 270 public health doctors and their employer, the Health Services Employers Agency, and ultimately their paymaster, the Department of Health.
What do public health doctors do?
The work of public health doctors, 80 per cent of whom are women, is mainly preventive. Their work includes the surveillance and control of infectious diseases such as SARS, meningitis, measles, the winter vomiting virus and food poisoning.
They are also involved in the planning and implementation of vaccinations and screening programmes.
Why are they on strike?
They want better pay and a structured out-of-hours public health system.
There are four main grades of public health doctors: directors of public health, specialists in public health, senior area medical officers and area medical officers.
The doctors want directors and specialists of public health to be paid the same as hospital consultants and they want pro- rata increases for the other grades. They want these paid in arrears back to 1994 because they say the Department of Health promised back then to review the public health service.
The review was continually delayed and was eventually produced in April 2002. Because of the failure of the Department of Health/HSEA to begin negotiations on the delayed review, called the Brennan review, the doctors voted in December 2002 by a 94 per cent majority in favour of strike action.
Their strike began 10 days ago on Monday, April 21st.
What has been offered to them by the Department of Health/ HSEA?
The Minister for Health , Mr Martin, said the doctors had lodged a 30 per cent pay claim in addition to increases of between 2.5 and 14.2 per cent which had been approved by benchmarking and the 7 per cent increase which will be paid under the terms of the new national pay agreement Sustaining Progress.
He said that before the strike, management made a substantial offer to the Irish Medical Organisation in an attempt to resolve the dispute. A cumulative increase of up to 25 per cent inclusive of the increases approved under benchmarking had been rejected by the IMO, he said.
These increases would mean the salary of directors of public health would increase by €29,000, from €82,000 to €111,000; the salary of public health specialists would increase by €17,000 from €78,000 to €95,000; the salary of senior area medical officers would increase by between €17,000 and €19,000 to between €72,000 and €82,000; and the salary of area medical officers would increase by between €11,000 and €13,000 to between €59,000 and €69,000.
So what's the problem?
The doctors say they have not sought a 30 per cent pay claim and deny they rejected a 25 per cent pay rise before the strike. The IMO says this pay rise had "not been presented to the organisation". It has refused to suspend its strike, saying the public health doctors are waiting nine years for action on their demands and are not prepared to wait any longer.
Where to from here?
Mr Martin has urged the doctors to return to talks at the Labour Relations Commission. The IMO says it is happy to attend further talks, provided it receives "written confirmation of the purpose and agenda for such talks".
Despite correspondence from the Department of Health as late as yesterday, it says it has yet to receive this.