Measures proposed by the Government to tackle the medical staffing crisis may not be the answer, the IMO has warned.
It is understood that part of the Medical Practitioners Act, due in October, will address the looming shortage in medical employees by extending the temporary registration for non-EU doctors from five to eight years. However, this is seen as an interim measure, and in the long term it would be reduced to four years.
The vice-president of the IMO, Dr Mick Molloy, considers this to be a stopgap measure of little merit. "It's playing with figures to try to artificially create a situation where you'll hold on to those who are here without looking at the reasons why non-EU people aren't coming and our own people aren't staying," he says.
More than 1,000 of Ireland's 2,800 non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) are non-EU graduates. They also make up 90 per cent of junior doctors in many hospitals outside Dublin. Dr Molloy maintains that both Irish and foreign doctors are going to countries where pay and working conditions are considered more favourable.
Also, where once the five-year cycle saw approximately 300 non-EU doctors coming in and 300 going out every year, according to Dr Molloy, the position now is that for the 300 leaving, about 20 are coming in.
This fall-off has occurred since the Irish Medical Council introduced clinical and language assessment for non-EU doctors in 1998. Whereas other European countries allow candidates to sit part of their exams in their country of origin, Ireland does not. Since last week, however, the IMC has allowed doctors who have passed the British assessment to practise here.
The IMC has met with the Department of Health to discuss the contents of the proposed legislation.
"The council has expressed the view that temporary registration is for postgraduate training and that these doctors are not coming purely for service," says the registrar of the IMC, Mr Brian Lea. The Department of Health said that no final decision has been taken on the legislation.
