Irish Medical Organisation

The Irish Medical Organisation (Irish: Ceardchumann Dhochtúirí na hÉireann ) is a professional association for Doctors in Ireland and is also the Trade Union representing all doctors in negotiations with the Irish government.

The IMO was formed in January 1984 through the amalgamation of the Irish Medical Association and the Irish Medical Union. It is a negotiating body which represents doctors in Ireland, recognised for negotiating purposes under the Trade Union Act 1941.

On 29 May 1839, a union of physicians and surgeons was formed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

"That it is therefore our opinion a legislative measure should be sought for by us, to unite the medical profession of Ireland into a co-operation upon such principles as shall constitute them one National Faculty, and thereby identify in feelings and interests, the greater mass of provincial practitioners with their metropolitan brethren"

The group lapsed from 1846 to 1852. On 7 June 1853, another congress was held in Dublin to re-establish the Association, and in 1882 it became incorporated as the Irish Medical Association. On 1 January 1936, the IMA merged with the Irish branch of the British Medical Association to form the Irish Free State Medical Union. It was later renamed the Medical Association of Éire (IMA & BMA), which became the IMA in 1950.

In 1957 negotiations between the IMA and the Irish government over employment conditions for doctors broke down with the government announcing that the IMA was not a registered trade union and so could not be recognised as a negotiating partner.

A debate began then within the organisation, between those who wanted to register as a trade union and those who felt that industrial trade union membership was incompatible with being a professional association with clinical/patient responsibilities or what was sometimes previously termed as a "learned profession".

In 1962, the Irish Medical Union was established, initially, as a sub-section of the IMA and then became a break-away group under the presidency of Dr Johnny Cox, a general practitioner and farmer in Delvin, Co. Westmeath. The medical doctors' trade union was initially housed at the offices of the IMA in Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2, and later moved to separate offices in Northumberland Road, [Dublin 4], then Harcourt Street [Dublin 2], and finally, to Drumcondra, Dublin.

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