Sir, – I read with despair your article on remuneration for hospital consultants (July 10th). Once again the inaccurate interpretation of half facts, peddled by the powers that be, continue to undermine the position of medical specialists in this country.
Your assertion that “Irish consultants now among the best paid in the world” is neither true nor supported by the quoted OECD report.
You are correct that there are many reasons why consultants are leaving the health service and why we have difficulty in recruiting new ones.
However you are seriously undermining any hope of resolving the issue if you refuse to accept pay is a major, if not the major factor for many. I am a brain surgeon. In fact I am a professor of brain surgery, the only one in the country. I have a full-time contract. This includes availability at night, weekends, and bank holidays. Every sixth night and weekend I am “on call”. There is no “48 hour” rule for consultants. For this I am paid €121,759.31.
An “enormous” sum no doubt but considerably less that often published and certainly less than Mary Harney’s pension or a TD’s package. My successor can expect to receive €95,634, about the same as a Grade 8 clerical officer in the HSE. Although this cut has been “reversed” so that my successor can rise to my elevated heights after nine years of service!
If you really think this puts us among the highest paid brain surgeons in the OECD, then I suspect you also write editorials annually to Santa Claus.
The reason for the mismatch between public perception, your views and the reality on the ground is not difficult to understand.
Honestly it’s not brain surgery, I should know.
It says it right there on the first page of the OECD report. The comparison is not between “consultant” salaries across the OECD but between “specialists employed full-time”. This is not the same thing.
In Ireland the only “specialist” employed full-time is a consultant. In every other OECD country there are a multitude of positions that are classified as “full-time specialist”. Some of these would be classified as training grades in Ireland. The others refer to junior grades who crucially are not responsible for independent practice but work under the supervision of senior specialists. The latter are the equivalent of our consultants, that is they are capable of independent practice and are responsible for diagnosis, management and treatment of their patients.
If one was to do a valid comparison on salaries one would only compare our consultants to these senior specialists. On that comparison Irish consultants would be among the lowest paid in the OECD.
That is one reason, and a major reason, why our consultants take jobs else where.
– Yours, etc,
Prof Ciaran Bolger,
Consultant Neurosurgeon,
Beaumont Hospital,
Dublin 9.