Dr. Peadar Gilligan:

To answer Deputy Durkan's specific point about pay parity, and this not being the location to negotiate that, I accept he believes it is correct that people should be paid equally for taking onerous jobs with a huge level of responsibility. However, it was a political decision to subject appointments to a consultant position from October 2012 onwards to a 30% cut.

That was only partly ameliorated by the efforts of the IMO regarding new consultants, with a slight uplift from 2015. That agreement has resulted in a doubling of the time it takes to reach the top point of the salary scale. Now, with the recent settlement that was an acknowledgement of breach of contract, we have a situation where that disparity has been increased again, as Ms Clyne has pointed out. Until that is addressed, we are not going to be able to recruit people to consultant positions in the numbers we need. We are going to have situations where we advertise for the most senior positions in our hospitals but attract no applicants. We are going to have a situation regarding the morale of newly-appointed doctors. Instead of being at their most productive in their first five years as consultants, they will be feeling utterly demoralised by the fact they are not being paid at the same level as someone else doing the same job. It was a political decision. It is a political imperative that the decision be reversed and that we treat all consultants the same way, because only when we do that will be able to address the recruitment and retention issue.