Consultants to get €200m back pay in landmark action
ALMOST €200million will be paid out of State coffers after thousands of hospital consultants across the country settled a landmark court action, the Government has confirmed.
The High Court approved the settlements of 700 cases, involving pay increases of between €55,000 and €72,000, that will benefit as many as 2,000 consultants across the country.
The breach of contract dispute arose from a 2008 Consultants Contract that had made certain ‘pay promises’ before the recession hit.
Consultants have long complained that the pay increases agreed with then health minister Mary Harney in 2008 in exchange for them working more flexible hours and abstaining from ‘moonlighting’ in private hospitals – were withheld.
In January 2009, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) accused the Government of being ‘dishonest’ in withholding the pay hikes. Last October, the IHCA warned of a potential ‘mass exodus’ of medical consultants if there was any move to abolish well-paid private practice in public hospitals.
This week, it emerged the State had hired private investigators to check if consultants were keeping their end of the bargain – a move that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar defended on Tuesday.
And even though the Government had previously vowed to ‘vigorously defend’ the legal actions, a lucrative out-of-court deal was reached yesterday after more than a week of intensive outof-court negotiations between teams of lawyers acting for the consultants and for the HSE and some individual hospitals.
Consultants, some of whom first lodged court actions in 2014, will now receive retrospective pay that will cost the State €182million, the Government confirmed last night. Their pay hikes will add €62million to the yearly consultant pay bill from 2019.
Announcing the deal in court, lawyers for the claimants declared that ‘justice has been done’.
Outside the Four Courts later, Dr Peadar Gilligan, president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), told the Irish Daily Mail that consultants had accepted ‘less than their full entitlement’ up to now.
The settlement means that ‘type A’ consultants, who only do public sector work, will see their pay packet increase from about €180,000 to €252,000 by 2022.
It’s understood that the vast majority of consultants – those on ‘type B’ contracts who are allowed to carry out limited private practice – will see their salaries jump from about €170,000 to €225,000 in the same timeframe.
The deal will not apply to anyone recruited after 2012. Consultants will receive the pay increases in increments, and will start to see the benefit in their pay packets from next January, IMO chief Dr Peadar Gilligan told the Mail.
He added that the full extent of the pay increases won’t be in place before 2022, adding: ‘We’ve waited ten years preceding this delay.’
Dr Gilligan said his members were ‘very pleased with the result’. However, the Irish Medical Organisation complained that the settlement fails to address the lower pay that consultants employed by the HSE since 2012 receive.
‘These consultants continue to suffer from the negative impact of the 30% cut to consultants appointed since 2012, and the additional cuts imposed.
‘And these doctors are the only group in the public service who have been discriminated against to this degree.
‘Nobody should be in any doubt that the State’s continued failure to deal with this issue is directly encouraging our young doctors to leave Ireland and practise their skills abroad in health services that value them and do not actively discriminate against them,’ the IMO said in a statement. Judge Úna Ní Raifeartaigh yesterday approved settlements in ten ‘lead’ cases, the terms of which state those consultants are ‘entitled to be paid correct remuneration’, the court heard.The judge noted that the ten settlements will ‘entirely resolve’ another 690 similar cases that were waiting to be heard.
Moreoever, consultants who did not lodge court actions will also receive retrospective pay benefits, John Rogers SC representing the consultants explained: ‘Well over 1,000 people are affected by that.’
Alex White SC, a former Labour minister, for one Dublin-based consultant, said the time spent in negotiations was ‘used very productively’.
Had the cases gone to a full court hearing, it would have taken up eight weeks of court time in total.
The consultants will also be awarded their legal costs of taking the cases to court. The 2008 Consultants Contract made certain promises about pay increases to hospital consultants in return for them working longer and more flexible hours. This included increasing their working week from 37 to 39 hours.
The then health minister Mary Harney offered them salaries of between €170,000 and €240,000 at that time – with increases to bring their pay up to those levels to be paid on a phased basis.
Due to the 2008 economic collapse, only the first agreed payment was made. The State later cut the pay of consultants by between 15 and 25%.
The IMO said last night that the pay dispute had become a ‘particularly divisive issue for the health services in Ireland’.
‘Justice has been done’ Warning of ‘mass exodus’