The IMO has criticised remarks made by Health Minister James Reilly on the junior doctor strike, which is set to go ahead next Tuesday following the breakdown of settlement moves.

The doctors' union has already refused a request to return to the LRC for last-ditch talks to settle the dispute over excessive working hours. A one-day national strike of junior hospital doctors is planned for Tuesday.

The Minister urged the IMO to return to talks, but said the its demand for extra pay for doctors who are forced to work in excess of a planned limit of 24 hours on continuous shifts cannot be granted.

The HSE has also rejected the extra pay demand, but has proposed that hospital managers be held to account and that hospitals should suffer budget cuts if they breach future shift limits.

The IMO says the the sanction proposals published by the HSE earlier this week were not presented to the IMO at previous LRC talks nor were they considered by the union.

IMO Assistant Director of Industrial Relations Eric Young said the manner in which the HSE waspublishing 'so called solutions' which they know will not meet the union's requirements demonstrated the 'hamfisted way the HSE is dealing with this issue'.

"Additionally, comments made by the Minister are not viewed as helpful given it is within the remit of the Minister to sort this matter out once and for all, and not through another working group as he proposed recently."

"Our members have no confidence in the HSE or the Minister's commitment to ending these working hours. This kind of incompetence goes to the heart of why NCHDs don't trust the HSE," Mr Young said.

In addition to the impasse over the range of sanctions that should be imposed for breaches of shift limits, the IMO is incensed at the HSE's tactics over the past week.

This, it said, included exaggerating the level of extra pay doctors were seeking as part of a sanctions package, and making public HSE proposals based on what had been discussed to date.

The one-day strike on Tuesday, which is likely to be followed by further industrial action, will lead to the cancellation of operaiton sand outpatient clinics. Around 15,000 patients could be affected.

Time to end junior doctor stand-off