UNIONS REPRESENTING hospital consultants were warned last night that negotiations on a new contract for their members had reached the end of the road.
Gerard Barry, chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE) employers agency, said: "We believe the process has now come to an end and it's time now for the medical organisations to make their decision."
The national council of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) and the consultants committee of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) will hold separate meetings in Dublin this morning to decide what to do next.
The IHCA is expected to decide to ballot its members on the document put forward and recommend it be rejected.
Donal Duffy, assistant general secretary of the IHCA, indicated his association will take definitive decisions on the proposals from the HSE with a view to putting them to a ballot at an early stage.
He said a number of points in the contract on offer had not been agreed.
Fintan Hourihan, director of industrial relations with the IMO, said: "Our assessment would be broadly the same". He said significant differences still remained between the employers and unions on pensions, hours of work, the regulation of private practice and salaries for academic consultants.
It is not clear however if the IMO will decide today to ballot its members on the contract put before them or whether they will decide to seek further talks with employers.
Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the HSE, said however on RTÉ's News at One that the talks had gone on for far too long. They have dragged on for more than four years.
He said the HSE wanted to move now to recruiting more consultants under the new contract, so patients could be seen more quickly and discharged more quickly by senior decision makers. Some new consultant posts were advertised a week ago and more will be advertised this weekend, he said.
He felt, he added, that most consultants were committed to improving the services and would see the new contract as a huge step forward and would sign up to changed work practices.
"I'd be extremely disappointed if this deal was rejected," he said.
The introduction of a new contract for hospital consultants is a key element of the Government's overall healthcare reform programme. If only some existing consultants signed up to the new contract, which provides for a longer working day and weekend work, it would make the Government's plans difficult to implement.
Heads of agreement on the new contract were agreed between employers and the IHCA in January but when it came to fleshing out the agreement, differences arose.
As it now stands consultants who sign up for the new contracts, and opt to work exclusively in the public sector, will be offered salaries of up to €240,000 a year.