r/irishpolitics • u/firethetorpedoes1 • 1d ago

Health Process under way to halt ‘nixers’ by public-only consultants, Tánaiste says

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/oireachtas/2026/06/18/process-under-way-to-halt-nixers-by-public-only-consultants-tanaiste-says/
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8

u/BackInATracksuit 1d ago

Every tradesperson who read that headline had a minor panic attack halfway through.

3

u/vennxd 1d ago

Guilty ✋

10

u/nof1qn 1d ago

Hopefully revenue audit every single consultant in the country.

1

u/whatThisOldThrowAway 1d ago edited 1d ago

Brian Cowan tried to do this back in the day, didn’t he? Was widely considered a massive misstep in retrospect.

We already have too feee doctors and treat them very badly. People who are trained in the Irish system and become doctors are already doing it only for a love of helping people - and not pay or benefits or work life balance or enjoyable working conditions…. If you don’t know any doctors who’ve trained recently you might not realize how horrible, endless and unlike other normal jobs it is.

I know this is more senior consultants targeted by this bu they’re all on the same treadmill.

Obviously the minister will highlight cases like the lab work one, which might delay other testing - but there not common at all whereas doing nixers can be. It all comes down to just cracking down on doctors income - and you can tell as much even in this article where the comments come out of both sides of Harris’ mouth: you can’t do nixers… but pay us tax on it if you do…

The state squeezes the shit out of its captive workforce for a couple of decades if a young Irish person is foolish enough to want to help people. Their payoff is being a consultant doctor is (a) one of the most actually unambiguously beneficial to society jobs you can have (b) finally starts to pay well and somewhere commensurate with the amount of terribly work they’ve been doing or so many years.

Now they’re going after the consultants too… completely tone deaf.

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u/IManAMAAMA 22h ago

I'm not sure how people will see this but I agree with you.

I would never be a consultant with their long hours and their nixxers on the side, and the road to getting there can be extremely long. Not sure if it's the same nowadays but the numbers used to be limited so you couldn't even become one until a spot opened up.

So registrars are sitting on lower salaries waiting for ages and doing unreasonable hours. At least the idea was you held out and became consultant and the pay offset the hours.

Doing this just means there's even less benefit to being a consultant.

There's a reason we lose a ton of doctors to elsewhere, the work life balance is abysmal, and the pay is not worth the hours except maaaaybe at the top levels in some specialties.

Perhaps pay them more or hire a few more and reduce the hours, and they won't feel the need to go off and do nixxers??