Public health doctors are "increasingly annoyed" at the "inadequacy" of the Government's response to their strike, the industrial relations officer of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.
Mr Fintan Hourihan said if there was not some indication of urgency by the Department of Health to resolve the strike, his members would "escalate our action" and consider placing pickets on acute hospitals.
Some 300 public health doctors - who work to prevent and monitor the spread of infectious disease - have been on strike since last Monday over pay and conditions.
Despite delivering a letter to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, on Thursday evening, telling him the IMO would be available for talks over the weekend, Mr Hourihan said there had been no communication from the department.
However, the IMO, as a condition of being available, has insisted that Mr Martin provide "personal assurances" that the Health Services Employment Agency (HSEA) is "prepared and fully briefed" to bring concrete proposals to the table.
A spokeswoman for the IMO explained that public health doctors had been promised proposals from the HSEA last October, but none had been tabled. "There is no point going to the LRC unless there's something concrete to talk about."
However, a spokeswoman for the department said a letter from the IMO to the Minister last Wednesday constituted an acceptable agenda.
In his letter of April 16th, Mr George McNeice, chief executive of the IMO, said his organisation was seeking:
• full implementation of the 2000 Brennan review of public health medicine;
• payment of salaries for specialists and directors equivalent to those of hospital consultants;
• payment of salary arrears to all public health doctors since 1994, and;
• the introduction of a "properly-structured out-of-hours system, including agreed payments".
