Seanad debates
Wednesday, 25 June 2003
Council Regulation on Procedures for amending the Sirene Manual: Referral to Joint Committee. - Health Service Reform: Statements (Resumed).
The situation with regard to the vested interests, the consultants, will be one of the most hotly debated topics in the entire report. Professor Brennan has been pretty harsh in her criticism of my colleagues. In one part of the report she says that there should be core times when a consultant must be available to patients in the public hospital and a formal act of monitoring work commitment in respect of public patients. Absolute categorical monitoring does not take place at the moment and if she wants to bring that in fair enough – it is not in the consultants' contract. Any time we tried to monitor each other, within the various hospitals in which I have worked, it was found that 90% of people were doing far more work than they were expected to do under their contract. Of course there was the 10% who were not doing it and we all ground our teeth about them and wondered how we could do anything because others had to carry their work. That happens in every organisation.
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