There will be fresh talks under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) this week in an attempt to solve a long-running row that has stalled the introduction of doctor-only medical cards.
The only issue in dispute between the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and health service employers at this stage is the amount GPs should be paid to tend to doctor-only medical card holders once they reach the age of 70 and become automatically entitled to full medical cards.
At present GPs get paid 3½ times more for seeing patients who get medical cards for the first time when they reach the age of 70 than they do for seeing patients over 70 who already had medical cards on reaching their 70th birthday.
The IMO wants GPs to be paid the higher rate for seeing holders of doctor-only medical cards when they reach the age of 70. Employers are refusing.
Labour Relations Commission chairman Kieran Mulvey will meet separately with the IMO and the health service employers today to see if a way can be found to resolve the dispute.
Dr Martin Daly, chairman of the IMO's GP committee, said: "We will be working hard to try and resolve this issue because its in everybody's interest - that of the Government, GPs, and most importantly taxpayers who fund this system and citizens that receive this service - that we have a new GP contract that reflects modern GP practice," he said.
Talks on a new medical card contract for GPs, however, cannot begin until the row over the introduction of the doctor-only medical cards is resolved.
Some 200,000 of the cards were promised by Minister for Health Mary Harney last November. She also promised an additional 30,000 full medical cards. To date, according to Dr Daly, none of these have been issued either.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's This Week programme yesterday, Ms Harney said a 9 per cent benchmarking award agreed for GPs at LRC talks earlier this year would not be paid unless GPs agreed to the introduction of the doctor-only cards.
Furthermore, she said if GPs did not agree to the introduction of the cards by the end of this month other ways would be found to assist families on low incomes access free GP services. "We may well give cash to patients or we may reimburse for expenditure or we may look at an insurance scheme," she said.
Dr Daly said GPs were currently paid an annual fee of €36 to treat a 9-year-old and if families were given a voucher for this amount, it would not cover one private GP visit by such a child.
Meanwhile, Ms Harney revealed more money may have to be spent on the €120 million payroll system installed by health boards in 1999. The original budget was €9 million.
She said she had recently asked the secretary general of the Department of Health to carry out an investigation into the system, which paid one member of staff €1 million in error. "If we got it wrong we have to put our hands up and say we got it wrong and abandon something that's not working. If it is meeting the needs of the healthcare system then you keep it," she said.