Non-consultant hospital doctors, or junior doctors, are having difficulties getting paid, due to having to join new payroll systems every time they start at a new post, according to the Irish Medical Organisation.
Chairman of the non-consultant hospital doctors committee at the IMO Dr John Cannon said junior doctors rotate hospitals in Ireland every six to 12 months as part of their training programme.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said that when they change hospital, even though they remain in Health Service Executive employment as their main employer, "they actually technically change employer as well at a local level.
"So that means every time they go to a new hospital, even though they're still working for the HSE, they have to join a new payroll system as all the payroll systems in the HSE are siloed, there's no national payroll system," he added.
Dr Cannon said that this often results in doctors going on to emergency tax, being put on the wrong pay point on the scale, missing hours that they are due in their pay, and, in some cases, not even getting paid at all.
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Dr Cannon said this is causing a lot of stress, and a lot of hardship for junior doctors, adding that the "system is broken" and apologies from the HSE "will no longer cut it".
He said the HSE has been aware the issues have been there for decades, and junior doctors have been repeatedly asked for the issues to be fixed.
"We have advised them that truly the one way to get rid of this issue is to have a single nationalised payroll system, similar to the gardaí, where at a click of a button every junior doctor in the country can be paid."
The IMO has a mandate from junior doctors for industrial action and strike.
"It's always been our goal to fix the issues in the system without putting any undue stress on the system, which is very, very stretched at the moment and to solve our issues without essentially going on strike," Dr Cannon added.
He said the IMO hopes negotiations with the HSE will start very soon.
"We're hoping to see real meaningful change, but we have to see that the HSE is willing to move and move fast," he said.
"The HSE has proven during Covid that it can be agile, it can change fast during the pandemic. We managed to vaccinate the entire country and register every man, woman and child in the country and give them a vaccine within a year.
"So the HSE has proven that it can leverage technology. It can be agile and it can change quickly, so we want to see those changes happen now and to remove this stress and this hardship on junior doctors.
"If we see those changes are happening and there's a willingness there, then we will stay in negotiations."
Dr Cannon added that the issue is one of the reasons that doctors are leaving Ireland to go to other countries to work.
He said it "is demoralising. It's exhausting, it's deflating and it's one of the reasons why our junior doctors are leaving to go to New Zealand and Australia and Canada to countries that they are respected both as people and as professionals".
The HSE said its national HR team has not received any reports of "widespread national specific problems," but apologised for any disruption to its staff members.
"Training positions changed over recently in July, meaning employees may be moving from one location to another. We're aware that this can sometimes lead to processing issues at local payroll level," the health service said in a statement.
"We sincerely apologise for the disruption this may cause to any of our staff members who may be affected."
