THE Government will have to pay over £100 million extra this year in salary increases and back money to the State's 27,000 nurses to honour the Labour
Court settlement of their dispute.
However, the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, denied the settlement terms could lead to successful follow-on claims from other public service workers.
Some 70 per cent of nurses voted to accept the terms. The initial cost of the settlement is £87 million but nurses will receive £27 million extra in back money - an average £1,000 each.
About £37 million of the total cost will have to be clawed back from other areas to keep Government spending within this year's guidelines.
Despite Mr Noonan's confident assurances that the nurses' award would not derail the Government's public sector pay policy, it was clear yesterday that public service unions representing gardai, prison officers, paramedical and non-nursing grades in the health services will try to use the precedent of the nurses' dispute to promote their own claims.
The concerns of employers at the implications were voiced last night by the director general of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, Mr John Dunne.
Welcoming the nurses' acceptance, he said: "It is critical that, as the Labour Court intended, the issues involved are seen as unique and do not provide a springboard for other groups in the public service to seek similar, special treatment.
"The recently concluded agreement on pay for the public service, as part of Partnership 2000, is at the limit of what the Government can afford."
Mr Noonan said the Labour Court had emphasised the uniqueness of the nurses' award on four counts.
One was a recognition that nurses' salary scales had fallen behind other comparable groups; the second was the much higher training and qualifications required; the third was the radical changes in their work; and the fourth was that they had received three promises of pay reviews which had never been honoured.
However, the general secretary of the Garda Federation, Mr Chris Finnegan, disputed the uniqueness of the award. "There has always been a traditional link between nurses and gardai." Gardai had earned more but they "are now earning £19,000, and nurses £21,000".
A spokesman for the Prison Officers' Association, Mr Tom Hoare, said: "There is no question but the nurses' award has implications. We have had pay parity with nurses since 1969. We will be seeking an early meeting with management to discuss pay."
Ambulance drivers in SIPTU and paramedical grades in IMPACT are also likely to use the award to press their claims.
A leading public service trade unionist in another union said the Government had "voluntarily gone to the Labour Court and asked it to adjudicate in the nurses' case".
"What moral right has the Government to refuse to do the same with other groups when other procedures have been exhausted under the national agreements?"