Nurses should debate the overall issues confronting their profession rather than allowing pay to dominate the debate, the Minister for Health and Children told the Psychiatric Nurses' Association of Ireland.
Speaking at the PNAI conference in Bantry, Co Cork, yesterday, Mr Cowen said: "It is a pity if all the focus is on the pay issue only and not on the composite agenda which will benefit nurses. This agenda includes not just pay, but new grading structures, improvements in a range of allowances, incremental credit, permanent positions for temporary nurses and nurses' education."
The president of the PNAI, Mr Gerry Coones, told delegates "the recent pay talks have given a further illustration of our services being the poor relation of the public service". He said nurses had been disappointed at the Minister's failure to include the pay issue in those he identified as priorities at the publication of the Nursing Commission report.
He reminded Mr Cowen that, when Fianna Fail was in opposition in 1997, the party had given an assurance that it would implement all the recommendations of the commission.
The Labour Court settlement in February 1997 meant that the current negotiations constitute unfinished business under the PCW [Programme for Competitiveness and Work]. It was disingenuous in the extreme for the Government to suggest that nurses were now looking for a second bite of the cherry under the PCW.
He described the pay negotiations with the Health Service Employers Agency last month as a sham. If progress was not made at next week's renewed Labour Court talks, this would lead inextricably to a national nursing dispute in early summer.
Mr Coones was extremely critical of the lack of progress in developing community services for the mentally ill. He said no crisis intervention service had been put in place, and the lack of suitable accommodation meant that almost half of the beds in acute psychiatric units were occupied by non-acute patients.
In his speech, Mr Cowen made no direct reference to community services, but he did say 10 new acute psychiatric units in general hospitals were being planned. He also said that more than £1.1 million in additional funding was being provided this year towards a specialist service for elderly psychiatric patients.
On staff nurse shortages, the Minister said £550,000 was being provided this year for recruitment campaigns to attract more school-leavers to the profession.