Mr. Barry O'Brien:

The current situation is that last Tuesday, the Labour Court issued a recommendation on three specific items. The first item is the historic rest days. We previously advised the committee that we had an exposure for €104 million for a group of 450 consultants from now until 2027. We sought to reduce that by 50% and that the leave would be availed of by 2018. The court has made a recommendation that it will be reduced by 25%, which will give us a saving of €26 million and that it must be taken in full by 2020. There will be a significant saving to the taxpayer on what was our liability prior to the Labour Court recommendation.

On the other two matters, the first matter was to do with the current rest day arrangements, whereby consultants working on a rota system of one in one, one in two, one in three and one in four, had certain rest day entitlements as well as being in receipt of their B factor, which is for a liability to be on call and a C factor, which is payment for being called in. The Labour Court recommended that the B and C factors should continue and that in future they will only get rest where they actually attend out of hours. They will be given compensatory rest consistent with the Working Time Act. In other words, if a consultant has cause to come in at 1 a.m. and work until 2 a.m., then the employer has a liability to give one hour's compensatory rest for that hour. Up to now, those consultants in a one in three arrangement were given 26 days additional leave per year for that liability and those in a one in four arrangement were given 13 additional days. Therefore, as and from last Tuesday, the HSE has advised all the hospitals that the rest for those in a one in three and a one in four no longer pertains. The IMO is balloting currently on the entire range of packages and this will be completed by 21 November. We have invited the IMO to engage immediately on giving effect to the two binding Labour Court recommendations. I have invited the IHCA to engage immediately on the Labour Court recommendations. The IHCA decided not to attend the Labour Court. The IHCA views its participation in the public service agreement as being based on collaboration rather than on a collective agreement. We view them as being fully encompassed by the Croke Park agreement and therefore it is our view that we have a collective agreement. Our submissions to the Labour Court were based on the view that any outcome of the court would be applied to all consultants employed in the public health system. That is the advice I will be giving to all the health sector managers, that the binding recommendations apply to all consultants equally.