Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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142. To ask the Minister for Health the measures he will take following the opinion of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice maintaining the State is in breach of European working time directives in relation to medical doctors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12322/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Court of Justice heard the case covering breaches of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) on Wednesday, 4 March. The preliminary opinion of the Judge Advocate General was published on 19 March and he found that Ireland has failed to fulfil its obligations under the EWTD for NCHDs, in particular by excluding in practice the training hours of non-consultant hospital doctors. This is not however the definitive position of the European Court of Justice. Full judgement is expected by the Court before the summer.

The Government is committed to achieving compliance with the provisions of the Directive. The HSE has made significant progress implementing the EWTD for NCHDs, particularly in the last year, and is close to full compliance with all of the provisions of the Directive apart from compliance with the 48 hour week, which stands at 68% at the end of January 2015, up from 40% compliance in the last quarter of 2013, and the 30% level of compliance in 2011. It has achieved 98% compliance with 30 minute daily rest breaks, 95% compliance with 11 hour daily rest breaks and 98% compliance with weekly/fortnightly rest breaks in the past two years.

The HSE has implemented a number of measures to progress compliance. These include changes to medical, nursing and midwifery and other work practices, redeployment of staff, aligning work patterns to work load and reducing the number of tiers of on-call cover. The HSE has increased the number of NCHDs by 400 over the last 2 years and is currently recruiting additional consultants.

The HSE submitted an updated Implementation Plan to my Department last month which identifies 2017 as the earliest date by which most NCHDs could be fully compliant, as in some instances compliance with the 48 hour week cannot be achieved without significant service reconfiguration. Measures identified within the report to improve compliance include the recruitment of additional NCHDs and consultants, the transfer of some of the NCHD tasks to other grades of staff, the reconfiguration of acute services in conjunction with the implementation of a Smaller Hospitals Framework and the development of the National Maternity Strategy and a single National Paediatric Hospital to replace three existing stand-alone paediatric hospitals.

My Department and the HSE will continue to focus on achieving compliance on EWTD in respect of the 48 hour requirement by the earliest possible date.