Proposals accepted: A long-running dispute between consultant psychiatrists and the State which has delayed the establishment of mental health tribunals has finally been resolved.
The announcement came yesterday evening after the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) and the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) informed health service employers that they were prepared to accept proposals put forward to end the dispute.
These include a pledge to recruit 20 additional consultant psychiatrists with full multidisciplinary teams this year to provide back-up to doctors who are serving on or giving evidence before the new tribunals, as well as a commitment to fill existing vacancies.
The tribunal's purpose is to review the cases of people detained involuntarily in psychiatric hospitals. There are up to 3,500 such cases in the Republic each year.
The IHCA and IMO had urged consultant psychiatrist members not to apply for posts on the tribunals because of their concerns about the way they would operate and how they would be resourced.
As the dispute intensified, the Department of Health decided in December to withhold a 1.5 per cent pay increase due to psychiatrists under the Sustaining Progress agreement.
The department said last night it was now prepared to lift the ban on paying this increase on foot of commitments received from the IHCA and IMO.
The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said last night she welcomed the resolution of the dispute.
"I am pleased that the IHCA and the IMO are now committed to co-operating with the full implementation of the Mental Health Act, 2001, including the participation of their consultant psychiatrist members on mental health tribunals," she said.
"I will be proceeding with arrangements for the making of the necessary Ministerial Order to bring Part 2 of the Act into operation this year."
The tribunals were key to the modernisation of mental health services, the Minister for Health added.
The IHCA secretary general, Finbarr Fitzpatrick, said that when he received written confirmation that the pay increase withheld from psychiatrists last month would be paid, he would respond formally to the HSE and the Department of Health.
He said he understood it would have been the secretary general of the Department of Health rather than Ms Harney who vetoed the pay increase last month.
Therefore, he wanted to hear directly from him that he had now "backed down on something he should never have done".
Fintan Hourihan, the IMO's director of industrial relations, said his organisation was pleased it got a satisfactory response to the serious concerns it had raised with regard to the operation of the tribunals.
The IMO, he said, was concerned that, among other things, the mental health budget would not be used to pay legal costs associated with the tribunals and that there would be locum cover for consultants appearing before them.
"We will be closely monitoring the implementation of the commitments given in coming months," he said.