Psychiatric nurses won't settle for less than 25% rise

The Government was told yesterday that psychiatric nurses will not settle for anything less than an increase of 25 per cent in pay through the forthcoming benchmarking report.

The general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA), Mr Des Kavanagh, told delegates in Ennis, Co Clare, yesterday that nurses cannot settle for anything less without destroying the profession.

He warned delegates that if the benchmarking body did not address basic nurses' pay, the Nursing Alliance must be prepared to act.

"The benchmarking body must justify awards made on the basis of objective criteria.

Any reasonable examination of the facts would ordain that nurses must make real advances against all the public service grades," he said.

Mr Kavanagh pointed out that nurses were the lowest paid of the health service professional grades and that the childcare workers' deal had resulted in a grade that gives them €4,000 a year more than nurses.

In his address, Mr Kavanagh also called for a special allowance for nurses working in Dublin "in order to retain existing employees and attract future returnees to work in Dublin, where the service is in crisis".

The PNA chairman, Mr Gerry Coone, also addressed the issue of benchmarking.

He said that if the reality turned out to be that teachers were taken care of and nurses were not, no one in Government needed to take a course in rocket science to know that there was trouble ahead.