Doctors specialising in public health belonging to the Irish Medical Organisation are to ballot for industrial action up to and including strike action as they demand to be upgraded to the status of hospital consultants.
As they are not ranked at consultant grade, public health doctors earn up to 48% less than their hospital consultant colleagues and have been campaigning to close that gap for around 20 years.
The ballot will commence on 16 November and will take around 10 days.
IMO sources said the doctors had not yet decided what form the industrial action would take but did not rule out industrial disruption before Christmas.
In normal circumstances, public health doctors deal with population health issues, including outbreaks of infectious diseases.
However, since the pandemic many have been engaged in "complex" contact tracing outside of households, where settings like nursing homes and schools are involved.
The 60 public health specialists can currently earn up to €111,822 but their hospital consultant colleagues with a "type-A" public-only contract can take home between €141,026 and €195,653.
Consultants with other contracts permitting an element of private practice could take home significantly more.
The IMO also argues that more public health specialists need to be recruited.
The union notes that while Ireland has 60, comparable countries like Scotland and New Zealand employ 179 and 169 respectively and that they are graded as consultants.
This evening, the Department of Health said it hoped to engage constructively in the next month to avoid any industrial action.
In a statement, it acknowledged that consultant status had been recommended for the public health specialty under a new public health framework in the Crowe Horwath Report published in 2018.
The Department said it was also consistent with the role envisaged for the public health specialists in Sláintecare and the Scally Report on the National Cervical Check Screening Service.
It said the Minister for Health, the Department and the HSE are committed to the early introduction of a new framework for public health care, as provided for in the Programme for Government, and that this will involve the establishment of a consultant-led public health model in line with the Crowe Horwath Report.
