00145261Dr Fred English protesting working hours outside St James’ Hospital, Dublin in 2013

Europe’s highest court has held that Ireland is in breach of EU law because it does not consider the training of junior doctors as part of their normal “working time.”

In an opinion, published this morning, the European Court of Justice held that the government was wrong to assume that the training of junior doctors did not fall within the remit of the EU Working Time Directive, which governs the maximum hours that EU citizens work and minimum rest periods.

The opinion noted that junior doctors are required to both provide a medical service and to carry out training to a high level, and that according to HSE rules themselves there was no “artificial barrier” between both requirements.

There you go now.

Ireland in breach of law over doctors’ hours – European Court of Justice (RTÉ)

Previously: Junior Doctors on Broadsheet

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22 thoughts on “24 No More

  1. Manolo

    Ryanair helped us understand that planes are just buses with wings. Now it is time that someone exposes the medical BS going on in this country: stop using queues as ego massaging tools, stop abusing jr doctors, remove gateway scam to specialists. Doctors still benefit from the same aura of superiority that politicians, bankers and the police used to have.

    1. Buzz

      No they don’t. People have about as much regard for them as they have for used-car salesmen. ‘Here’s your antibiotics perscription/ anxiety medication – that’ll be sixty quid. Next!’

      1. Manolo

        That’s a GP, but for a consultant people are willing to have their chest cut open by someone they only talked to for 15 minutes without any references.

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          You make it sound like consultants are just some random on the street in a trench coat saying “Psst.. got a perforated intestine? I’ll sort you out for twenty slides and a bottle of anti-freeze”

          1. Manolo

            Come on, doctors, specially consultants, are only checked out when something goes very wrong. They are infallible until the opposite is proven. They live under an aura of respectability that wasn’t gained other than by public assumption. Yes, it is theirs to lose, and that rarely happens. But the info available publicly is heavily filtered.

        2. Buzz

          Really? Anyone I know who was having an operation of any significance shopped around for a good butcher.

          1. Manolo

            Sure, if you can. But what were people’s sources of information? Was it anything more reliable than hearsay?

          2. Buzz

            It was mostly friends-of-friends who had had the same operation and recommendations from other medics.

          3. Manolo

            So up there in reliability with the advice to get on the property ladder back in the noughties.

          4. Buzz

            I suppose, but word-of-mouth is probably the best recommendation in this town whether you’re looking for a plumber, solicitor or someone to replace your hip.

  2. Mark Dennehy

    Can’t believe they had to go to the ECJ to get a ruling that it’s a bad idea for a junior doctor to be trying to treat patients after they’ve been up and at work for anything up to thirty hours.

    You would have thought that at some point, the Minister (the only one with the authority to do so) would step in and say “Lads, for fups sakes, not only is this a stupid idea, we’re going to lose in court and have to pay the costs. Concede the case and get on with it.”

    Of course, you would then be running the risk of remembering where you were…

    1. JimmytheHead

      its amazing the level of care we can give out considering how over worked and under staffed our hospitals are. having been visiting in them alot of the last year ive seen first hand how long some of their shifts are, i could barely get a bus home after being awake that long let alone treat someone for a life threatening condition

  3. Dubloony

    I don’t want anyone near me with a scalpel or syringe with a shaky hand and can’t see straight after a 24 hour shift.
    No-one else is allowed work like that, can’t believe its still in place here.

  4. Kieran NYC

    And yet senior doctors have been perfectly happy putting junior doctors through the same shite for decades.

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