Key findings:

• 87.1 per cent of consultants had signed up to the new consultant contract by 29 October 2005. This represents an increase since 2004, where the sign-up level was at 76.9 per cent
• the mean number of programmed activities per consultant job plan was 10.83, with an average of 7.83 allocated for direct clinical care
• 51.9 per cent of consultants had between 0 and 1 programmed activities per job plan allocated to unscheduled on-call work
• 40.8 per cent of consultants had between 0 and 1 programmed activities per job plan allocated to scheduled on-call work
• 68.3 per cent of consultants were in receipt of category A on-call payments and 15 per cent were in receipt of category B on-call payments.