Nurses' demands for improved pay and conditions in a number of areas were rejected by health service managers yesterday in talks at the Labour Relations Commission.
Nurses' unions are seeking the introduction of a 35-hour week, a Dublin "weighting allowance" and premium payments for working unsocial shifts.
The three issues, they say, were ignored by the benchmarking body when it recommended an 8 per cent increase for staff nurses last July.
Unions were told yesterday, however, that conceding the claims would cost €900 million, and they should be withdrawn.
The talks at the LRC, attended by the Nursing Alliance and the Health Service Employers' Agency, lasted only a short time.
Mr Brendan Mulligan, the agency's head of industrial relations, said the union claims were in breach of the stability clause in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
"That clause precludes any cost-increasing claim being served on an employer. If €900 million is not a cost-increasing claim, I don't know what is.
"We didn't get into debating the issues. We said the claims should be withdrawn because they were in breach of the PPF."
Mr Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, one of four unions that make up the Nursing Alliance, said the HSEA had made "no effort to engage" at the talks.
The unions would now consider their position, but would most likely seek to have the issues referred to the Labour Court. Industrial action was not being considered in the meantime.
Nurses might also seek the reconstitution of a ministerial group which had been looking at the recruitment and retention of nurses in Dublin, he said.
Members of the INO voted in September to "vigorously pursue" the claims "through all available procedures". SIPTU, IMPACT and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association are the other members of the alliance.
