Talks on a new contract for hospital consultants have reached stalemate once again.
Virtually all parties are extremely doubtful that a deal on a new contract can be reached in advance of a deadline of next Tuesday set by the Government.
Health service management and consultants will resume talks today. However, there is deadlock at present in relation to issues such as private practice rights, clinical independence and proposed changes to the traditional working week.
There are also difficulties in relation to issues such as advocacy rights for consultants.
Management emphatically rejected proposals tabled by doctors on Tuesday that the Government should appoint new part-time consultants who would have rights to treat fee-paying patients in off-site private hospitals. The consultant bodies argued that there had to be something on offer in the new contract to encourage consultants who currently had off-site private practice rights to sign up to it.
They also sought that such an arrangement be offered to future staff.
However, it is understood that management maintained that the consultants' proposal would undermine its official position that in future there should be no doctors appointed with rights to off-site private practice.
Management is prepared to allow some existing consultants to retain such rights if they agree to other elements of the new contract, such as team working and an extended working day.
However it has ruled out allowing new consultants to work in off-site private hospitals.
The independent chairman of the negotiations, barrister Mark Connaughton, is expected to provide a report for Cabinet on Tuesday on the state of the talks.
Government will then decide on whether to to allow the talks more time or to implement its plans to appoint, unilaterally, the first of up to 1,500 new consultants on revised terms.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) director of industrial relations, Fintan Hourihan, said he was aware that the Government had approached some postgraduate medical colleges to secure senior personnel to assess candidates for such posts.
The consultant bodies have said that they would boycott interview panels for such positions if they were advertised unilaterally by the Government.
The IMO is also to ballot its specialist registrar members (the grade immediately below consultant who would be in line to apply for such posts) on the Government's proposals for a new contract. IMO consultant committee chairman Seán Tierney said he did not believe an agreement could be reached by Tuesday but that a deal could be concluded before the election.
"I think if the Minister were to proceed to unilaterally recruit consultants on a range of new contracts in parallel with existing contracts we would be left with an unworkable public hospital system," he added