asked the Minister for Health the salary rates payable to visiting consultants under the sessional basis of payment, assuming maximum sessions worked per week during a year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Payment to Visiting Consultants.
64.
The current sessional rate of payment for visiting consultants, other than ophthalmologists, in the health authority service is £6 per three-hour session. On the basis of a maximum of 11 three-hour sessions per week for 52 weeks, the annual remuneration would amount to £3,432.
For ophthalmologists the approved sessional rate is £4 15s per three-hour session which corresponds, on the basis indicated earlier, to remuneration at the rate of £2,717 a year.
66.
asked the Minister for Health whether it is possible to make an assessment of the average maximum and average minimum payments drawn by visiting consultants from the pool of funds made available from local authority payments to voluntary hospitals for their services.
The distribution of the funds in the pool created by the amounts provided for the remuneration of visiting medical staffs in the capitation rates payable by health authorities to voluntary hospitals is a matter entirely for the medical boards of the hospitals. I am not supplied with details of payments from pool funds and I am not, therefore, in a position to furnish the information requested by the Deputy. I might mention, however, that according to a recent calculation made in my Department the "pool" accruing in a recent year in the ten Dublin general teaching hospitals, the three Dublin teaching children's hospitals, the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin and St. Michael's Hospital, Dún Laoghaire, amounted to £220.000 and this, if divided equally between the 133 specialists participating in the "pool", would give each a total of £1,650.