TALKS AIMED at averting a threatened national strike by ambulance personnel next month are to reconvene next Thursday following more than three hours of talks yesterday between the trade union Siptu and health service management.
The dispute is over a recent decision by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to sign contracts with three private ambulance operators for the provision of some services.
Siptu national industrial secretary Matt Merrigan said yesterday that the union saw this development as "a small step towards the privatisation of the public health services". "We have a written agreement with them to ensure that that does not happen. Unfortunately, they breached that agreement," he said.
Mr Merrigan said the union's agreement allowed for the utilisation of external ambulance providers, but that this related mainly to the patient transport services.
"The written contracts that they have signed [ with the private ambulance operators] covers all types of emergency and urgent work and to date, the private ambulance services are filling in the gaps in the roster system because we have not got enough of our own people to cover these services," he said.
The HSE has strongly denied that there was any move towards privatising the ambulance service.
Gaye Dalton, industrial relations executive with the HSE Employers' Agency, said a number of the former health boards had had a number of contracts with private ambulance operators.
"We regularised those contracts as part of a unified structure and the issue is around the regularisation of those contracts," she said.
A HSE spokeswoman said the organisation was engaged in expanding the public ambulance services. She said about 100 extra staff had been recruited and that a new ambulance service training college had been established in Ballinasloe, Co Galway.