Non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) are to be balloted for industrial action as part of an ongoing dispute over the restoration of a specific allowance.

The dispute centres on the Living Out Allowance, which is worth €3,000, but was scrapped during the economic downturn.

According to the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), the decision to ballot follows a breakdown in talks between it and the Department of Health. The IMO will also return to the High Court to have the matter heard.

"In late October, the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform agreed in the High Court to enter talks with the IMO on this matter. On November 14, the two departments disengaged from those talks and effectively breached the agreement reached at the High Court," the IMO said.

According to IMO president, Dr John Duddy, this is a ‘further example of the lack of respect for doctors'. It also shows that the Government is ‘ignoring the crisis we have in retaining doctors in Ireland'.

"Doctors will have no choice now but to consider all avenues to have our issues resolved including industrial action. No doctor wants to strike and indeed it would be with great reluctance that we would embark on such an action but in the face of a Government that behaves in such a manner we will have no choice," Dr Duddy insisted.

He pointed out that waiting lists continue to grow, there are insufficient beds in the hospital system and not enough consultants, ‘yet the policy of this Minister for Health is to make sure that we actively encourage our highly trained doctors to leave Ireland and work abroad'.

"This Minister talks a lot about reform of the services and he is well aware of the need to keep doctors in Ireland, yet he and his colleagues in Government send out a very different message to doctors," Dr Duddy added.

In response to this, the Minister for Health and the Minster for Public Expenditure and Reform insisted that they are ‘committed to engagement with the IMO on matters of mutual concern'.

"The particular issue of the Living Out Allowance, which is under consideration by both parties (management and IMO), involves potentially significant Exchequer resources which have not been provided for in either the current or next year's budgetary provision. Accordingly, this issue would need to be considered in the context of wider public sector engagement," the departments said.