Doctors’ pay to absorb ‘big chunk’ of extra €1bn for health

Pay for doctors will take "a big chunk" of the extra €1 billion allocated to the health budget for next year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil.

Mr Varadkar said there are more doctors working in the health service than ever before. But there is not a corresponding increase in “activity”, in the number of patients being seen or procedures completed.

He said it is possible to engage with doctors’ representative groups the Irish Medical Organisation and the Irish Hospital Consultants Association. But he added that they had to accept “some realities. We probably need a new approach.”

Mr Varadkar was responding to Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin who highlighted the number of consultant vacancies in the State.

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Mr Martin said there were a million people on out- and in-patient waiting lists. And more than 6,000 are waiting up to two years for elderly-care services. All of this was affected by the chronic shortage in consultants. He said that of 3,176 approved posts in Ireland, only 2,713 were filled, which he said meant 463 unfilled qualified consultant posts.

Ireland had 40 per cent fewer consultants than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average.

The Fianna Fáil leader said there was general agreement that cuts to new entry consultant salaries, particularly in 2012, was a factor.

He said the 30 per cent cut in pay to new entrants was a major inhibitor to filling the “unprecedented number of unfilled posts”.

Mr Varadkar said the Government has accepted there is a problem in recruitment and retention of consultants in the health system. But he said next year there would be “two pay increases, pay restoration, an increment and special measures for those new entrants”.

He said they had negotiated an arrangement with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions for new entrants after 2011 to equalise pay.

It doesn’t do that fully for consultants but it did go a significant way, he said. He said “those pay increases take a big chunk of the billion euro” extra for next year’s budget.

“We need to make sure all the extra money doesn’t go to extra pay,” but also goes to services, new drugs, equipment and buildings.

He said “we have more doctors working in our health service than ever before but we are not seeing that matched in terms of activity” for the number of patients being seen and the procedures being completed.