Madam, – Fine Gael has plans to reform the health service along the lines of the Dutch system of regulated competition. While strategies to improve the quality of the health service are welcome, unfortunately the Dutch system has not been successful, leading to a reduction in quality and an increase in costs (Journal of Health Policy).
The Irish hospital system is facing a form of consultant manpower crisis now that has not been publicised. Our experience has been that strongly qualified candidates for the most specialised consultant posts are not willing to apply for these posts because of the restrictive conditions in the recently changed consultant contracts, among other issues. These restrictions limit the productivity and working conditions of highly qualified consultants.
While the intention of the new contract was to keep the best doctors spending all of their time working in public hospitals, the opposite effect is occurring and in fact many of these specialists will not work in Ireland at all. This will gradually have a major knock-on effect on the quality of healthcare in Ireland, which most of the public will be blind to.
Fine Gael has plans that could make this situation worse. In this time of very high unemployment and sovereign insolvency there is little interest in the work problems facing higher paid public sector employees. But regardless of ideology, the facts are the facts and this is an evolving serious quality problem for the health service. A lessening of restrictions in consultant contracts would alleviate this problem and actually cost the exchequer considerably less in salaries. – Yours, etc,