Details are emerging of extra payments and allowances hospital consultants will be entitled to under the new contract negotiated with the HSE last night.
Up to now, attention has focussed on the basic salaries which could be earned by hospital consultants for their work with public patients.
They would range from €240,000 a year – for a doctor solely doing public practice – to €175,000 for a specialist electing to do extra private practice in private hospitals.
However, a number of addditional allowance will significantly raise the income of consultants if the new deal is accepted.
A consultant taking on a post of additional responsibility, like clinical director, would be entitled to an extra €50,000 a year.
There will also be a pensionable on-call allowance averaging €6,000 a year, though that could be significantly higher for some staff.
Consultants called out to a hospital on the weekend for an average of two hours would earn an extra €250.
(These payments could be considerably higher for longer or more frequent call-outs, and depend on the time of day.)
Consultants will also receive an allowance for continuing medical education of up to €3,000 a year.
These extra payments would boost consultants incomes considerably – and may prove crucial in persuading them to accept the government proposals.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive of the Health Service Executive, Professor Brendan Drumm, has warned that the new contract for hospital consultants that was agreed last night is final, and that negotiations cannot be re-opened.
The contract was agreed with the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, which represents over 1,600 consultants, but has yet to be formally accepted.
The Irish Medical Organisation negotiating team met the contract talks chairman, Mark Connaughton, for more than two-and-a-half hours today and agreed to resume discussions next week.
An IMO statement said that a comprehensive range of issues was discussed but it was clear that much detail needed to be worked on still.
As the IMO was not involved in the final round of negotiations last night it was unclear whether it was likely to accept the documents agreed.
The IMO represents not just 850 current consultants but also significant numbers of non-consultant hospital doctors who would be applying for up to 2,000 new consultant posts in the next few years.
The IHCA has said it was optimistic the deal would be accepted by members.
