Consultants to launch court challenge to two-tier pay structure

Hospital consultants are to legally challenge the existing two-tier pay structure for senior doctors.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said its case would challenge the discriminatory salary scales which have been imposed on new-entrant consultants who have the same duties and responsibilities as their colleagues.

“New-entrant consultants with 10 to 15 years’ postgraduate specialist training are commencing work on salaries 25 per cent lower than their older consultant colleagues and they will never reach parity with them unless the discrimination is ended.”

Dramatic fall-off

In the autumn of 2012, the then Fine Gael-Labour coalition unilaterally introduced pay cuts of 30 per cent for all consultants appointed after that date. Medical organisations contended that these cuts led to a dramatic fall-off in the number of doctors seeking consultant positions in

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Ireland

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The pay cuts were partially reversed in late 2014.

Speaking on Monday, the president of the IHCA, Dr Tom Ryan, said the organisation had little choice but to take the challenge on behalf of its members.

“Despite the fact that there are hundreds of permanent consultant posts vacant and that highly trained specialist doctors continue to emigrate, the State has persisted with its deliberate and incomprehensible decision to select new-entrant consultants for dramatic salary cuts. This action is a blatant breach of employment equality legislation which prohibits such discrimination. The association will always support and insist on equal pay for equal work.”

The IHCA said it was currently surveying its public contract members to assemble robust statistical evidence in support of these cases.