Plans by hospital consultants to reduce hospitals across the State to emergency service providers only next Monday were called off last night.
The organisation representing the 1,500 consultants who planned the action, which would have seen all elective surgery and outpatient appointments cancelled, decided to defer its action for four weeks when its national council met in emergency session at a Dublin hotel.
The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA) said it was deferring the action to give the Department of Health more time to resolve the long-running row over who will indemnify its members into the future against claims arising out of past incidents of negligence.
Nobody has been insuring them in respect of such claims since a new State insurance scheme to cover their practice was introduced on February 1st. The new enterprise liability scheme does not cover them for historic liabilities.
One of the bodies that had been insuring many Irish consultants up to February 1st, the British-based Medical Defence Union (MDU) indicated it was short of funds and might not be able to meet the costs of all past claims, particularly for obstetricians.
The IHCA said this meant consultants, if sued, could face financial ruin.
Intensive talks have been taking place over the past week however between the Department of Health and the MDU in an attempt to reach a settlement. It is anticipated this will result in an arrangement where the historic liabilities of obstetricians will be shared by the MDU and the State. The MDU says the liabilities amount to €138 million. The Department of Health claims they are closer to €400 million.
Given the progress made in these talks, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, called the IHCA to a special meeting at Leinster House yesterday afternoon where he again appealed to them to defer their action. He said four weeks were needed to conclude a deal with the MDU.
After the national council of the IHCA considered the plea last night, IHCA secretary general Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick confirmed the action would be deferred for four weeks. But he said if no deal was reached by then the consequences would be "unthinkable".
Along with deferring their intention to provide emergency services only at all public and private hospitals from next week, the consultants have decided to call off some other forms of industrial action which they began in recent days. This effectively means disruption to the work of the National Treatment Purchase Fund will stop and consultants will return to participating in interview panels for posts in the health service.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the situation would be kept under review and the IHCA is due to meet Mr Martin again in two weeks' time to be updated on the Department's talks with the MDU.
Asked if the deferral was a climbdown by the IHCA, he said it was not. "The Minister argued he needed time to complete the negotiations and we decided as a gesture of good faith to give it to him," he said.
He added that the national council was cautious about coming to its decision to defer the action but in the end the decision was a unanimous one.
Mr Martin welcomed their decision. He said concrete progress had been made in talks with the MDU since the beginning of this month but a number of significant issues remained to be clarified and negotiated. "Discussions could take up to four weeks to conclude," he said.
The outcome of the negotiations will require the approval of Government.