Mr. Barry O'Brien:

It is important to confirm that health service management is committed to ensuring full compliance with the timeframes we have agreed between ourselves and the IMO to reduce non-consultant hospital doctor hours, to implement maximum shifts of 24 hours and to achieve full compliance with the European working time directive by December 2014. One key issue of debate throughout the Labour Relations Commission discussions was the issue of sanctions. I wish to put this in the context of a structure to incentivise compliance, rather than to penalise anyone, but it has been agreed that the national director for acute hospitals will withhold an annual sum of €15 million from the budgetary allocation of the public acute hospital system and this will be redistributed on the basis that we achieve full compliance right across our system. Consequently, we have agreed with the IMO that there will be a three-band structure for hospitals. The larger hospitals, which are eight in number, will be in band one and they can be sanctioned up to a maximum of €650,000 for the year. Band two contains 18 hospitals and they can receive a sanction of up to €350,000 for the year, while band three hospitals, of which there are 15, can be sanctioned up to €225,000. That is where the total of €15 million comes from.

It is important to state that the HSE perceives this as being the exception, rather than the norm. We envisage this as only occurring in the situation where local management have not given effect to already agreed decisions taken by management and the IMO as to how compliance will be achieved in that specific location. Consequently, we perceive this as being highly exceptional. Notwithstanding that, it was one of the key requirements of the IMO.