The threat by Minister for Health Mary Harney to employ new hospital consultants on a contract which would confine them to treating public patients only should be carried out, according to Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey.
He said yesterday "the status quo" could not continue. Hospital consultants at the moment are obliged to work no more than 33 hours a week, time which can be spent on private as well as public patients.
Talks on a new contract for consultants began late last year and reconvene later this month. Ms Harney says if they are not concluded by spring, and if agreement is not reached on having some of them employed on public-only contracts, she will press ahead with the introduction of a public-only contract for new consultant appointments.
Dr Twomey said he agreed "we may have to go down this road", but he accused Ms Harney of lacking joined-up thinking, pointing out her plan to build private hospitals on grounds of public ones would not work if all new consultants were appointed to do public work only. He believes private hospitals should be entirely separate from public ones and not erected "in the car parks of public hospitals".
He urged Ms Harney to specify the date from which public-only contracts would be introduced. "She should quit talking about what she will do and get on with actually doing it," he said.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Associatiohas already said it would boycott plans to introduce a public-only contract for consultants in advance of the conclusion of talks on a new contract.