The country's largest trade union, Siptu, has warned that the health service is facing further spending cuts next year.
Siptu national industrial secretary Matt Merrigan told delegates at the union's biennial conference in Tralee, Co Kerry yesterday that in the current economic situation the budget of the Health Service Executive (HSE) would be cut back by about 3 per cent in real terms in 2008.
He forecast that exchequer spend- ing on health would rise by about 4.5 per cent next year over its current €14 billion budget. However, in reality such increases would represent an actual decline in spending in real terms given the unavoidable rises in the level of medical inflation and the pay bill.
Mr Merrigan said the HSE did not believe in social partnership and that it had engaged in "management by diktat". He also warned of possible industrial action if there was any move by management to row back on the terms and conditions of staff.
He said if there were any serious attempts by HSE management to take away the hard-won rights of workers that had been established in collective, written and local agreements "then this union will support any action up to and including full-scale industrial action in respect of dealing with these issues". "We are not going to be rolled over once again by the employers who want to dictate the way they run the health services," he said.
Mr Merrigan said the union wanted to send a wake-up call to the public on the health service. "Unless and until we stand up and defend the public health service, there is going to be further attacks made on it. And those further attacks will open up the doors for the privateers to come in and take the cream of the services, make the profits, and leave the rump then to the public health service."
He said a co-ordinated response of the trade union movement was needed and not just through the Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court in the case being brought over the current cutbacks. He said the unions were going to win as the HSE was clearly in breach of agreements in the manner in which the cuts were implemented. Mr Merrigan said it was not fair to blame staff for the difficulties in the health service. The existing HSE financial structures were not the best way to run a health service.
Michelle Monaghan, of the health professionals' branch, said staff in the health sector had to prepared for protests. "Enough is enough," she said.
Jimmy Jordan told delegates the country would never have a proper health service until the vested interests, such as the consultants, were taken on and while there was a two-tier system in operation.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor said the introduction of co-location hospitals represented the biggest attack on the development of a comprehensive and accessible health service in a generation.