Nearly 300 hospital consultants have moved on to new public-only contracts, which will see them work extended hours in the evenings and at weekends, new figures show.
The introduction of the new contracts earlier this year, which prohibit consultants from engaging in private work in public hospitals, has met with some resistance from the sector.
Figures from the Health Service Executive (HSE) show that 294 consultants have moved from their existing terms to the new contracts, while a further 125 new consultants have been appointed to roles under the public-only contracts.
The contract offers doctors salaries of up to €252,000, with the packages worth as much as €300,000 with additional allowances, on-call and overtime payments and pension contributions.
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The Government had pushed ahead with the new contracts in March, despite the proposed terms being rejected by members of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA).
While existing consultants can remain on their previous contracts, new consultants will only be able to work under the public-only contracts.
The IMO gave a “cautious welcome” to the fact that 125 new consultants had been appointed since March. It noted that this was only a “fraction” of the number of consultants needed to fill the more than 900 vacant positions across the health service.
Professor Matthew Sadlier, who chairs the IMO’s consultant committee, said staff were concerned not about salary levels under the new contracts, but rather about “other key issues”, such as uncertainty about working hours and the location of where they would work, as well as lack of resources.
Prof Sadlier said it would be towards the end of this year before there was a “decent sense” of what the take-up rate of the new contracts was among consultants.
The transfer of consultants from existing to new contracts was a “huge” additional workload on human resources departments in hospitals, he said. “We know of consultants who have applied to change who are waiting [for new contracts],” he said.
The decision to move on to the public-only contract was “a very personal and individual decision” for staff, he said.
Prof Sadlier said the IMO remained “very concerned” at growing hospital waiting lists and the “intolerable conditions for patients and staff” in the health service, due to staffing shortages.
The consultant said more work needed to be done to fill the 900 plus vacant consultant posts in the health service.
“We are short a further 2,000 consultants based on population at the moment so the scale of the challenge is clear,” he said.
A spokesman for the HSE said it was seeing a “steady increase week on week” in the uptake of the new contracts.
“The new contract has significant benefits for the health services in terms of the flexibilities contained therein and also an attractive remuneration package for the individuals,” he said.
The HSE was also undertaking a marketing campaign to recruit consultants from the UK and Australia, the spokesman said.
