Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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341. To ask the Minister for Health if the reported costs of €110,000 every 13 weeks to recruit agency consultants to Letterkenny General Hospital, County Donegal, were taken from the hospital's annual budget; and the action he proposes to take to avoid this additional cost in the future. [36549/14]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In certain instances it is not possible to fill vacant posts through recruitment and it is necessary, in order to support service delivery, to employ locums as an alternative. In Letterkenny, there are currently 7.5 WTE consultant posts being filled by agency (hourly rate of pay consultants). The costs associated with agency usage are part of a hospital's annual budget. It must be stressed however that consultants are only employed via agency when all other opportunities to recruit on payroll have been exhausted. The HSE has advised that every attempt has been made to fill these posts on a permanent basis and steps are continually being taken both nationally and locally to recruit and fill these posts with consultants willing to come on HSE payroll on either a temporary or permanent basis.

Measures are in train to support consultant recruitment and retention. In July 2013 Minister Reilly established a Working Group, chaired by Professor Brian MacCraith, to carry out a strategic review of medical training and career structures. The Group submitted its final report in June. My Department, in conjunction with relevant stakeholders, is pursuing implementation of the recommendations made by the MacCraith Group to support NCHD and consultant retention. One of the recommendations from the MacCraith report was that the relevant parties commence a timetabled IR engagement of short duration to address the barrier caused by the variation in rates of remuneration that have emerged since 2012 between new entrant consultants and their established peers. A number of meetings between the management (HSE, Departments of Health and Public Expenditure and Reform) and the IMO on this recommendation were facilitated by the LRC. Management presented a paper setting out a new career and pay structure for consultants. The LRC has made related recommendations, involving enhanced pay scales for new entrant consultants, and these are currently being considered by the IMO.