Minister for Health Mary Harney appears determined to bring the health service to its knees in an "Irish Ferries-style rush" to introduce a new employment contract, hospital consultants have claimed.
Earlier, Ms Harney said Irish consultants were the best paid in the world and she was not prepared to wait indefinitely while negotiations proceeded on a new contract.
She gave a deadline of two months for the talks to finish or she would proceed with a new system of public-service only contracts. The Minister was speaking on RTÉ's This Week programme. That brought a furious reaction from the consultants association, which accused Ms Harney of appearing determined to bring the health service to its knees by flying in the face of the partnership process.
"Any threat to guillotine the talks in such a presumptive fashion flies in the face of the constructive partnership approach to problem resolution that has worked well in all sectors of Irish society in recent years," said an association statement.
The statement said it was now four years since the issue of a new consultants' contract was promised in the health strategy, but the Department of Health had still not tabled any proposals for change to the existing arrangements. "If a new contract is so pivotal to reform, why is this so? The Irish Hospital Consultants Association looks forward to negotiating on all aspects of the present contract."
A spokesman for Ms Harney said the comparison between hospital consultants and Irish Ferries workers was "exaggerated and absurd". The talks would not be guillotined, but there was an urgency about them that would have to be recognised.
The Minister is adamant that if the Republic's 1,800 hospital consultants, who have a mix of public and private practice, do not agree to a new contract, she will introduce fundamental changes in the system.
In the absence of agreement, she plans to create a new type of consultant to deal solely with public patients. The existing contract was negotiated in 1979 and it has been a source of contention since because of the wide freedom it allows publicly-paid consultants to engage in private practice.
Both sides have adopted entrenched positions for the latest talks, which are due to begin on January 26th. The Government side agreed its strategy at a meeting last Friday and Ms Harney said on RTÉ yesterday that she was not prepared to countenance further delays.
"I want to see a situation where patients are admitted to hospital on the grounds of medical need and there is no question of a decision being made on the basis that somebody pays a fee and somebody else doesn't. We cannot have in our public hospital system a situation where anybody in that hospital gets a fee for some patients but doesn't get a fee for another. That does not lead to equity and that is part of the problem in our public healthcare system at the moment." The Government could not wait forever to get a new contract agreement.
"If we want the best clinicians, the best nurses, the best physiotherapists, the best healthcare professionals, we have got to pay them a good salary," Ms Harney added.
"In Ireland, I saw from OECD figures I looked at during the week, we have the best paid consultants in the world. We have the third best paid nurses in the world, so we pay our healthcare professionals well. What I am concerned about is the manner in which people work in the public hospital system.
"We are only prepared to wait a couple of months. The next meeting between the HSE, who lead discussions for the Government in this matter, and the Department of Health and the consultants will take place later this month. That is the end of January."
"I certainly hope by the spring of this year that we are in a position to move forward and employ new consultants on the basis of a new contract of employment."