‘Driving into work was painful’ - NI consultant has no regrets about move to Republic to escape struggling NHS

A consultant doctor from Northern Ireland who moved to the Republic has said she no longer dreads driving into work.

Reported to be one of a growing number of senior medics crossing the border for better pay and conditions, Dr Karen Humphries told RTÉ she is now up to 70% better off financially each month – but she would have happily stayed with the NHS on her original pay if conditions had been better.

She added that her “only regret is that I didn’t jump probably a few years earlier”.

“I had got to the point where driving into work was painful. You were close to tears. That has gone,” she said.

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She left her job in 2018, citing a “crumbling” health system, regimented structures and bureaucracy, now working as a consultant psychiatrist in Cavan/Monaghan Mental Health Services.

“Even after the much higher taxation rates in the Republic compared to the north, and even after you allow for the exchange rate, I am at least 50 to 70% better off per month than if I had remained as a consultant in the NHS,” she said.

“So, from a financial perspective, of course, it’s much nicer. Of course I get paid more, but they could actually pay me exactly the same as I was earning in the NHS and just make my job better and I would have been happy.”

Still a firm believer in the “wonderful concept” of the NHS, with healthcare free at the point of access, she said the reality was that it has been underfunded for years.

There are no official figures for how many doctors in Northern Ireland have taken up posts in the Republic, but RTÉ reports that the UK’s medical regulator (the General Medical Council) has seen increased interest.

UK-based doctors wishing to work in the Republic must have a Certificate of Good Standing (CGS), with applications rising from 507 in 2022 to 804 in 2023.

This does not confirm a doctor has moved, and of last year’s 804 applicants – 632 remain registered in the UK.

It echoes a similar warning in June this year, with Derry GP Dr Tom Black telling a BMA conference that Northern Ireland consultants could double their salary across the border while escaping a “perfect storm of lack of funding, understaffing and huge waiting lists.”

He also told RTÉ: “The system in the Republic of Ireland is under stress and under strain, but we would regard it as coping.

“And it’s certainly coping in terms of the waiting times of less than 12 months, whereas some of our waiting times are six to eight years.

“I mean, you might as well not have a service if somebody tells you you’re going to wait eight years for a treatment.”