A retired surgeon has been appointed to head up the surgical unit at Cavan General Hospital which has been at the centre of controversy for most of the past two years.
The appointee, James Murphy, who practised for many years at Dublin's St Vincent's hospital, will also be lead consultant surgeon at Monaghan General Hospital as both Cavan and Monaghan hospitals now have a joint surgery department.
Mr Murphy visited the northeast last week but sources have indicated that not all surgeons in the hospitals are happy about his appointment.
The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA) plans to write to the Health Service Executive (HSE) to ask for his role and responsibilities to be clarified.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, general secretary of the IHCA, said: "We will be looking for clarification of the terms of his appointment to ensure there is no breach of the consultants' contract".
The HSE has described Mr Murphy's role as non-practising lead consultant surgeon at the Cavan/Monaghan department of surgery. It says he will oversee the implementation of a plan to deal with the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) advice on surgery in Cavan and Monaghan.
The RCSI, in a report last November, following its inspection of the Cavan surgery unit, described it as dysfunctional and criticised the ongoing lack of surgical leadership in the department.
The unit has been run mainly by locum consultants since the August 2003 suspension of two of its three permanent surgeons, William Joyce and Pawan Rajpal, over so-called "interpersonal difficulties". Their suspensions were lifted last December by the Minister for Health.