Hospital consultants have accused the Government of being ‘anti-doctor and in particular, anti-consultant'.

According to the president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), Dr Peadar Gilligan, the persistence of the two-tier pay policy, which sees consultants hired after October 2012 paid 30% less than their colleagues hired before that date, is directly linked to the HSE's inability to hire consultants.

There are currently 500 vacant consultant positions nationwide.

The IMO has launched a new campaign, ‘Fight for Fairness', which aims to highlight the inequity of paying people different rates of pay for doing the same job.

"Five months ago, the Minister for Health said that he would sit down and address new entrant consultant contracts, but he has yet to do so. We want those talks to commence immediately so that we can sort out the recruitment crisis, which is directly linked to the appalling waiting lists facing patients across the country," Dr Gilligan said.

He pointed to a recent IMO survey of consultants, which found that 97% of them felt that recruitment problems were a direct result of the 2012 pay cut. Some 83% felt that it had a detrimental impact on patient care.

"It is time for the government to sit down with consultants to earnestly discuss pay restoration for post-2012 consultants. These cuts were a retrograde step and have set medical recruitment back years in Ireland.

"The doctors that we need to fill these specialist posts are out there, but they are in Australia, the UK, the US, New Zealand and Canada, where consultant pay has not been cut and where healthcare is far better resourced than in Ireland," Dr Gilligan added.