THE WAR OF words between Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors and the HSE has intensified ahead of strike action next week.
Junior doctors will walk off the job next Tuesday in protest at the long hours they are expected to work.
Talks aimed at averting the strike have thus fair failed and Health Minister James Reilly today said that the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), which represents the doctors, should return to the negotiating table.
However, the IMO has said that is not going to happen.
Eric Young, Assistant Director for Industrial Relations at the IMO, said that the HSE’s publishing of solutions demonstrates “the ham fisted way the HSE is dealing with this issue”.
“Additionally,” he said, “comments made by the Minister today are not viewed as helpful given it is within the remit of the Minister to sort this matter out once and for all, and not through another working group as he proposed recently”.
It’s incredible that at this late stage the Minister thinks these proposals will resolve matters – it is too little too late and our members have no confidence in the HSE or the Minister’s commitment to ending these working hours. This kind of incompetence goes to the heart of why NCHDs don’t trust the HSE.
The IMO also rejected the characterisation of the IMO’s proposed sanction (time in lieu to the relevant NCHD for the time they are required to work above the 24 hour shift limit) as a cost increasing claim.
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