Madam, - I refer to your editorial of August 22nd regarding the contractual entitlements of hospital consultants and the impasse which has arisen in negotiations between the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association and the Health Service Executive/ Department of Health. Both your editorial and HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm are incorrect in stating that Category 2 consultants are paid a full salary while retaining the right to earn significant income in the private sector. Hospital consultants who have Category 2 contracts have their salaries reduced by 20 per cent in return for the right to practise in private hospitals. Incidentally, their public hospital contract commitments are the same as those of their colleagues who work exclusively in the public sector.
As far back as 1999, the IHCA recommended the appointment of 1,000 extra hospital consultants and also recommended that hospitals should be run over an extended routine flexible day. We remain committed to these aims and it is an indictment of the Department of Health, and more recently the HSE, that real progress has not been made in making a reality of the flexibility which is required.
The IHCA advised the Tánaiste and HSE early last October that we were prepared to enter contract negotiations. A full six months after being invited to these negotiations by the Tánaiste, neither her Department nor the HSE was in a position to bring the text of a revised contract to the negotiating table. It would seem that everybody wants change but nobody is prepared to put the precise proposals on the table.
Rather the HSE board has broken trust with hospital consultants through its decision to abolish one category of contract while negotiations were in progress. The result of the HSE board's activity has been to cause the negotiations to flounder and damage the trust that should exist between the participants of the contract negotiations.
There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the HSE proposal for a public-only contract. Indeed, such a contract was negotiated in 1991 but, on the insistence of the Department of Health, was abolished during the 1997 negotiations.
The National Health Strategy declared that contract negotiations with hospital consultants should be completed in 2002.
A full six years later, we have yet to see a comprehensive set of proposals from the Department or the HSE, and of course, hospital consultants are blamed for the procrastination and ineptitude of those responsible. - Yours, etc,
FINBARR FITZPATRICK,
Secretary General,
IHCA,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14.