Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Going back 20 years, I know someone who worked as a junior doctor and who was on-call 136 hours one week and 76 hours the following week. They were on what we call a “one in two” call. They worked every day from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. and they were on call every second night and every second weekend. There has been a move away from that and there has been some change. The number of junior doctors has increased substantially. The overall workforce in the HSE has gone from 103,000 staff to 131,000, with an increase of approximately 27% in both the number of consultants and the number of junior doctors.

The problem I find in the feedback I get from junior doctors and consultants is the resistance to change. The best example I can give is of someone who worked in the UK. A new problem arrived at their door in regard to the type of patients they were dealing with, and they were able to get funding within six months to set up a particular clinic to deal with this new problem. When they come back to Ireland, something hit them about a particular core group of patients. They suggested that a special clinic be set up to deal with that but it took ten years for that to happen. That summarises the position. There seems to be huge resistance to change. When junior doctors or consultants come up with proposals, there is resistance. How can that issue be dealt with? It has been in the health system for the past 25, 30 or 40 years and it has not changed in any way.

There is another issue. In one of the major hospitals in Ireland, something like 14 highly specialised consultants have walked away and have gone totally into the private sector because they just could not cope with the fact they could not get their job done and they could not access beds and theatres. Even as recently as last night, I was talking to someone who was trying to get their first access to theatre in five weeks and was told yesterday morning they would have to cancel their theatre list. That is the kind of frustration that has resulted. In the end, that consultant fought their corner and was able to go ahead with the operations. It is that kind of resistance. How can that kind of issue be dealt with? How can the way administrators seem to be managing the care that doctors want to provide be changed, given there seems to be a resistance to that kind of change?