Dr. Roisín Plunkett:

It might be useful to explain. A consultant contract was introduced in 2008, which had a very attractive salary. That was the carrot, as it were, for the fact that there was a stick with many other less attractive changes, such as the retirement age moving from 55 years to 65 years and limitations to the types of practice people could do. That contract was a huge change and the promised salary was higher. When Senator James Reilly was Minister for Health he unilaterally cut the new entrant consultant salary by 38%, which was, in fact, less of a reduction of cost for the HSE than there would have been by reducing everybody's salary within the HSE by 1%. Obviously, it was a move that was easy to make because, in theory, one is going from large figures to slightly smaller, but still large, figures. However, it was not a very wise decision. When one comes to the end of long training and goes into a job with a huge amount of responsibility one would expect a salary to be commensurate with that of a highly trained business person or a highly trained doctor in another service. The salary having been cut so drastically, understandably in the midst of huge economic hardship at the time, has never been properly redressed. The MacCraith recruitment and retention process has come out of trying to mend some of the difficulties with recruitment and retention. Acknowledging that it is not just about money is very important but, at the same time, if one is in a job where somebody else is earning 38% more that is difficult to swallow. It is same as the position for the new entrant police or firefighters. It is just not fair.