The Government is facing fresh industrial unrest within the health service following yesterday's decision by hospital consultants to ballot for a campaign of industrial action, write John Downes& Eithne Donnellan.
If approved by the 1,600 members of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) engaged in public practice, the proposed industrial action will take effect from May 21st.
It would include consultants refusing to take part in hospital and national committees and no longer making themselves available for any meetings with HSE senior management.
However, in a move welcomed by the Irish Medical Organisation, which also represents consultants, the IHCA yesterday said its precondition for re-entering negotiations was now a "guaranteed undertaking" that all new appointments will be made under the current contract or an agreed new contract.
This suggests that the recruitment process for 68 new consultant posts advertised last week, which may take up to a year, could go ahead if such an undertaking were to be provided.
But both the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, and health service employers have declined to provide such a commitment to date. Yesterday Ms Harney instead reiterated her belief that "it is possible for contracts for new consultants to be agreed contracts".
Labelling yesterday's decision by the IHCA as "counter-productive," she urged the members of the IHCA to reconsider and to "put patients' interests first".
"There is time for the talks to resume," she said. "There can be no justification, however, for the process of recruiting new consultants to be paused or held up any more, now or in the future"
Gerard Barry, chief executive of the HSE Employers Agency, said he regretted "very much" the decision by the IHCA to ballot for a mandate for "any form of industrial action. It can only result in further disruption to hospitals and the health service generally", he said.
But Fine Gael Health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey TD last night claimed that "we should forget about trying to renegotiate the existing contract. What we must now do is look at what sort of contract we can deliver for consultants of the future."