The European Commission has warned that Irish hospital consultants must have their salaries cut as they are earning twice as much as their counterparts in Britain and Germany.
The Irish Sunday Times reports that the European Commission discovered while reviewing Ireland’s bailout program that medical specialists in Ireland are earning €181,000 a year, far more than €91,000 in Britain and €100,000 in Germany.
Further, the Commission’s review found that Irish hospital consultants are getting paid an approximate staggering 12 times more than those in Hungary, and four times more than those in Portugal.
While the Commission acknowledged that the Irish government recently implemented a 30 percent pay cut for newly appointed consultants, they recommended further measures to address the “high level of remuneration.”
The report included other ‘hard-hitting comments.’ The Commission’s report revised its growth forecasts for Ireland down by 0.3 percent for both 2013 and 2014.
The Commission’s report noted that Ireland’s Department of Finance has been more “optimistic” about Irish projected economic growth, but warned that this optimism could lead to a massive €1.5bn gap in revenue by 2015 if the growth did not materialize. Thus, additional budget cutbacks may be needed.
The report also warned of a “real risk” that the government’s redundancy scheme in the public sector will fail to achieve its target of reducing the workforce by a further 10,000 by 2015.
The report explained that high unemployment will discourage public servants from leaving their current employment. However, if the required numbers do leave they are likely to place additional cost pressures on the social welfare budget.
Says the report, “On the basis of the commission’s lower macroeconomic projections, the planned adjustment effort over the forecast period may not be sufficient to reach the deficit targets.”
“A new Comprehensive Expenditure Review will start in 2013 providing options for further fiscal adjustment in 2014-15 and reassessing government spending priorities.”
4 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.butlerreport | Jan 16, 2013, 12:04 PM EST
The quality of Irish health-care is a real concern given what we read about daily.
irishpjk | Jan 14, 2013, 06:55 PM EST
wtf. Over a year ago my 66 year old cousin started having heart problems, tests showed an aneurism on the descending aorta, next test showed he had a skipped heartbeat, in November they found he had three blocked arteries, each time he was sent home to wait for a bed and more testing. On December 10th he did not come home for dinner at 1pm three hours later he was found dead in the field. Last week the hospital called his house to set up the next test. He is only one of five people I know who died waiting for a bed in hospital. Bottom line they spend all that money and still only have at best third world medical coverage, and Obama care is on its way down that road. With most heart problems if they wait long enough the problem will take care of itself and then you bury the patient no more heart problem.
miamicanes | Jan 14, 2013, 11:39 AM EST
And how much do the commissioners make. What a joke.
Gossoon | Jan 14, 2013, 09:46 AM EST
Whatever about their salaries, Irish paediatric consultants in Irish hospitals are not even alert to the everyday risks to babies. On 7/1/2013 the Irish Medical News revealed that in Ireland seventy bottle-fed babies a day are exposed to over a hundred times more fluoride than if breast-fed, yet these consultants don't warn parents about it.