A SIGNIFICANT gap still divides nursing unions and health service managers on what will constitute emergency cover in the event of a strike.
The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, has asked the Nursing Alliance to extend its cover to include the mentally handicapped, hospices, maternity hospitals and hospital departments providing radio and chemotherapy.
He has also asked the unions to provide the equivalent of weekend cover at general hospitals, as opposed to the `night cover' contained in the guidelines issued by the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO). Weekend cover would mean that around 50 per cent of nurses would work on a voluntary unpaid basis. `Night cover' means the figure would be nearer 25 per cent, although in accident and emergency departments `night cover' effectively means maintaining full staffing levels.
After the meeting, Mr Noonan said that he was particularly concerned about mentally handicapped patients attending day-care units. The nursing unions have already indicated that residential units for the mentally-handicapped will be covered in the event of strike.
The general secretary of the INO, Mr P.J. Madden, said after the meeting that the unions would be responding to the Minister's request shortly. He was satisfied that the Minister "recognises the seriousness of the situation facing all of us as we face into the first ever national nurses' strike".
The general secretary of Impact, Mr Peter McLoone, was pessimistic that adequate arrangements could be agreed before the strike. "No matter how hard we work at this, once you take this number of nurses out of the system, this becomes an accident waiting to happen."
However, a senior management negotiator, Mr Gerard Barry, of the Health Service Employers Association, said that while he accepted that difficulties were inevitable with any contingency plan, he believed a lot of work remained to be done that could make the cover more satisfactory.
After discussing emergency cover, it is understood, there was a brief discussion of the INO claim for higher pay. After Mr Madden outlined the union position, Mr Noonan is understood to have referred again to the difficulty of dealing with it under the terms of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
He referred to the comments by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, at the launch of Partnership 2000 last week that the settlement had to be within the terms of the PCW.
A SIPTU official, Mr Noel Dowling, said that while the discussions had been constructive, no obvious way of averting a full-scale strike had emerged. The unions were now setting up joint strike committees in areas where they shared members.
The Minister is expected to meet the unions again shortly, to reconsider the emergency cover issue.