Psychiatric nurses vote overwhelmingly for industrial action over staffing

Psychiatric nurses have served notice of industrial action on the HSE in a dispute over staff shortages across the country’s mental health services and hospitals.

In a ballot conducted over the past two weeks, 96 per cent of 6,000 Psychiatric Nurses’ Association members who voted backed the proposal for industrial action up to and including strikes, although no decision has been taken yet on what form the action, which is scheduled to begin on July 18th, will take.

The union’s general secretary, Peter Hughes, said the large vote in favour illustrated the scale of the membership’s frustration over existing staffing levels.

“There are over 700 vacancies in the mental health services which is seriously impacting on the delivery of care, the depletion of frontline services and the inability to develop services,” he said.

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He pointed to comments made by John Farrelly, chief executive of the Mental Health Commission, as the MHC published its annual report on Tuesday, to the effect that a number of acute inpatient centre providers, particularly the HSE, “are struggling to meet standards” in areas such as staffing, care planning and risk management.

Mr Hughes said the comments were “deeply concerning”, particularly as they related to a period before the imposition of the HSE’s current recruitment embargo. “The situation described by the MHC has in fact deteriorated since November last,” he said.

Asked last week about the PNA ballot, while it was still in progress, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said he understood the union’s concerns and “I’ve no doubt that through discussions, engagements and possibly the intervention of the WRC, we will find a way to navigate the situation”.

Mr Hughes suggested he believed the three weeks’ notice of action would provide time for engagement but said “our mental health services are at a critical point” and that this needed to be recognised by the HSE.

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