Mr. Martin Varley:

Based on the 2008 contract, it is to go to €252,000 for type A public-only contract consultants. For type B consultants, the difference is approximately €66,000, 52% currently. This will increase to approximately 70% if the discriminatory salary scales are not corrected.

To put it very simply, the message we are sending out is that to be competitive, we need to start to pay the new entrants what was included in the contract agreed by the Minister for Health in 2008. A decade later, as we are not even paying the new entrants anything approaching what was agreed in 2008, it is not surprising we are not competitive. That is the first point.

The second point is if one has a differential of the order of between 50% and 60% and one is asking people with ten or 15 years' experience and fellowships from the US and wherever else to come back and work alongside a colleague where there is such a differential in salary, it is not surprising that they are not showing interest in the posts. It is discrimination in the extreme. We are not talking about the 10% differential that came in in 2011, this is of another order of magnitude and it is in a profession and in a grade whereby we have always suffered in trying to compete and fill posts.

The other thing to add is that, relatively speaking, we have a lower number of consultants on a population basis. The job is somewhat more onerous. One could be on a one-in-three or a one-in-four on-call roster. If one was in another jurisdiction, one might be on call one in 15 or one in 20 weekends in a year compared with one in three or one in four or five. All of those things come into play and as we said earlier, if there is a difficulty getting resources to treat patients, that is an added difficulty for consultants coming in. New consultants are always competing trying to find a resource such as theatre operating slots, bed space for patients and whatever else. There is a whole cocktail of issues coming into play but we would say we have to end the discrimination to be in a position to compete and get these highly trained specialists back. That is what I have to say on the salary issues.

I cannot leave out the number of beds and the fact we do not have adequate capacity in the health service. This is the perennial issue that keeps coming back to us over recent decades. We have cut the beds when we should have been increasing them. Now we are quite concerned. We have a national development plan with funding for 2,600 beds but I do not see any serious intent in the system to put in place an annual commissioning plan. We are in crisis mode and if one is in crisis mode with beds and trying to get patients off waiting lists and off trolleys, the first thing one should do is to have an annual commissioning plan. I hear nobody in the health service management talking about that.