Some 394 doctors on maternity leave received a part-refund of their annual retention fee from the Medical Council last year. To date this year, 238 refunds had been processed in relation to doctors taking maternity leave.
A small number of doctors on extended sick leave and surrogacy leave have availed of the refund scheme, which also applies to doctors on adoptive leave.
In July 2022, the Council announced a new policy to ensure doctors who were on – or going on – maternity leave could receive a 50 per cent refund of their annual retention fee. Some 166 refunds were processed during that year. The policy was subsequently extended to include other types of leave.
In the past, doctors on maternity leave either paid the full retention fee or voluntarily withdrew from the register. As well as facilitating a partial refund of the retention fee, the policy reduces the administrative burden of voluntarily withdrawing from and reapplying to the register.
Data from the Medical Council has shown an increasing number of female doctors in Ireland. In younger age categories, female doctors outnumber their male counterparts, according to the Council’s Medical Workforce Intelligence Report 2023.
Last year, 19,328 doctors reported being clinically active in Ireland either all or some of the time. The gender breakdown of these doctors was 10,251 males and 9,077 females.
Among doctors aged 34 and younger, 2,879 were female and 2,567 were male. In the age category 35 to 44, some 3,004 doctors were female and 2,788 were male.
More than half of NCHDs in training were also female (54.5 per cent), according to the report.
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