Gavan Reilly questions TDs on double-jobbing consultants — Rte Radio 1
Gavan Reilly used a Politics by Numbers column on rte radio 1 to ask whether TDs can criticise double-jobbing consultants while many of them hold second careers. His argument landed in the middle of the Rotunda Hospital row, where the government and the board have been locked over consultant contracts that allow private work.
Professor Seán Daly said this week that “the consultants offering private work on the side were still fulfilling all of their public hours.” Reilly also wrote that he could “speak with some experience about the comfort blanket that private care can provide” after his family faced a 20-week scan that identified an anomaly.
Rotunda Hospital contracts
The Rotunda Hospital said its contracts included a clause permitting private work. The government threatened to cut State funding for the hospital’s everyday services, turning the dispute into a wider test of how far public money can be used when private work remains part of the arrangement.
Reilly framed the argument through a practical example from his own family. He said the public system made no offer of more regular scans or continuity of seeing the same consultant each time in that situation, which left his family choosing private care for reassurance during a difficult pregnancy.
Sláintecare and Leinster House
The row also reopened the broader debate about whether private maternity care in Ireland should be abolished. That argument sits alongside Sláintecare, the plan backed unanimously across the Dáil after the 2016 general election to disentangle the public and private hospital systems.
Reilly’s point was not about one hospital alone. It was about whether TDs who benefit from second jobs can credibly attack doctors for outside work when the political system has already accepted, in principle, the separation of public and private care.
Public hours and private care
Seán Daly’s statement left the immediate dispute in a narrow place: the consultants at the centre of the row were still doing their public hours, even as the government pressed for public-only contracts. The clash now sits between a funding threat on one side and a contract clause on the other.
For readers following the issue, the practical question is where that leaves the push to change maternity care. The Rotunda dispute has made the argument more concrete, because it links hospital staffing terms, State funding, and the comfort patients say private care can provide when continuity matters most.
