IRISH MEDICAL ORGANISATION President Denis McCauley told the union’s annual conference that the healthcare system is being “undermined” by a lack of suitable beds, specialist consultants, and general practice doctors.

McCauley said these structural issues have led to “frighteningly long” waiting lists. The union chief said the introduction of a recommended 5,000 bed needs to take place immediately as capacity has breached its limits.

He also called for better working structures and supports for consultants, the rollout of even more GP training positions as well as highlighting how institutional challenges are putting medical practitioners at risk of negligence.

McCauley claimed that 20% of consultant posts within the HSE remain empty. He called for better work and support structures to be introduced, so weekend shifts are not shifting work from a weekday to a Saturday or Sunday.

The IMO president said on-call consultants need to be acknowledged and their roles need to be restructured into ones which adds to the volume of work undertaken across the week rather than simply replaces the work done on other days currently.

He welcomed the increases in General Practitioner training figures, but claimed it did not go far enough. He called for more training positions to be made available in order to maintain a good stream of new medical staff in the coming years.

McCauley also highlighted how many of the current issues within the healthcare system are putting staff at risk of medical negligence.

He said that case law now extends the definition of negligence to include defective practices and argues that the current issues around staffing levels and infrastructural deficiencies opens up the risk to even more staff in the HSE.

“A failure to do this is leading to Ireland being an outlier in medical litigation, it is encouraging the exodus of well-trained competent medical staff from our shores to other health systems where this is not an issue,” McCauley said.