The legal requirement on all hospitals to significantly reduce the working hours of junior doctors by August 1st next is just not going to be met, it was conceded yesterday.
Mr David Hanly, chairman of the group which produced the controversial Hanly report on hospital reorganisation and reducing working hours, said the EU requirement to reduce the working week to an average of 58 hours was certainly not going to be achieved in many of the State's smaller hospitals.
Failing to comply with the European Working Time Directive will leave hospitals and the State liable to large fines.
Mr Hanly told a meeting in Dublin organised by Clinicians in Management Ireland that the State would have to approach the EU and point out to it that it was moving towards implementing the directive, but that it would take some time.
Mr Hanly said he was disappointed at the progress in implementing this aspect of his report.
"It is disappointing that there hasn't been much more rapid movement on everything, but you are as aware of all the issues as I am," he said, pointing to the fact that the Irish Medical Organisation's negotiations with health service employers were "somewhere in the Labour Court structure" and that the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association had refused to enter talks on a new contract until concerns over a new way of insuring their practice through enterprise liability was sorted out.
He said the Hanly plan had set aside industrial relations issues, but he accepted that junior doctors would have to be compensated for a reduction in their working hours.
Mr Hanly heard concerns that his report, which has suggested replacing accident and emergency units at smaller hospitals such as Nenagh and Ennis with minor injury units that would only be open during the day, would put the lives of patients in rural areas at risk.
Dr Barry Ward, a consultant at Portlaoise Hospital, said he feared that if the ambulance service was not properly resourced the "golden hour" needed to treat patients in emergencies would be lost.
Mr Hanly said his report was predicated on the ambulance service being improved, ambulance personnel being trained to a higher level, and the 3,000 beds promised in the national health strategy being provided.
The small number of beds already provided was "absolutely not adequate", he said.
He warned that no attempt should be made to move any services to another hospital until that hospital was adequately resourced to take on the work in terms of staffing and bed capacity.
Meanwhile, local hospital action groups and doctors from across the State campaigning against the Hanly recommendations will meet in Kill, Co Kildare, tomorrow where they will put forward alternatives which they believe would work.
They will also consider whether or not to put forward anti-Hanly candidates in the June local elections.