HOSPITAL CONSULTANTS will accept pay cuts announced in the Budget if money they are already owed after signing new contracts is paid, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has said.
Donal Duffy, assistant secretary general of the IHCA, said consultants were due a second round of pay increases last June for signing up to new work practices but the payment of those was postponed to September 2010.
He said if this money was not paid, its loss combined with the latest 15 per cent pay cut for all public servants earning more than €200,000 a year – which would be the majority of consultants – would mean consultants effectively suffering a 30 per cent pay cut.
“We can’t have a situation where we are going to have two pay cuts when everybody else is having one. It would be grossly unfair for consultants to be hit twice,” he said.
He added that the report of the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector published last week said where cuts in salary had already been applied these should be absorbed into its recommendations. This happened in the case of Government Ministers, he said, whose pay packets would therefore not be hit on the double as a result of the Budget.
The IHCA, which represents the majority of hospital consultants and met on Saturday to discuss the matter, will meet Minister for Health Mary Harney tomorrow evening to air its concerns.
Asked what its members would do if Ms Harney refused to pay outstanding monies due to consultants under new contracts he said no decision had been made. “I’m not going to speculate one way or the other,” he said, but stressed consultants would not be engaging in strike action.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), which also represents hospital consultants, is adopting a similar position to the IHCA. Finbarr Murphy, director of industrial relations with the IMO, said the pay cut announced in the Budget should only come into effect if consultants’ contracts were honoured.
In return for signing the new contract, which involved new restrictions on private practice rights and longer working days, consultants were to receive salary scales of €175,000-€240,000. The first phase of pay increases under the new contract were made earlier this year at a cost of €140 million. However, the Government withheld the second phase of increases due in June.
Dr John Barton, a consultant at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe and a former Fine Gael election candidate, said yesterday the 15 per cent pay cut announced in the Budget was an indication it was “insane” of the Government to have paid consultants pay increases earlier this year.
Dr Barton is not a member of either the IHCA or IMO.