SERVICES involving child care, elective admissions to hospitals and facilities for the mentally-handicapped will be seriously affected by a strike of 3,500 paramedics due to begin today.
The classification of "paramedic" includes physiotherapists social workers, biochemists and other health specialists in hospitals and health centres throughout the State.
Last-minute attempts by the Labour Relations Commission to reconcile the positions of both sides continued until 10 p.m. yesterday. Afterwards, the LRC's chief executive, Mr Kieran Mulvey, issued a statement regretting that no basis could be found for resolving the central issue in dispute - namely, the claim by paramedics to maintain traditional pay parity with nurses.
It appears that the Government is now prepared for a major confrontation with the paramedics' union, IMPACT, in order to halt the accelerating pay drift in the public sector. One senior Government source said at the weekend that it was necessary to demonstrate firmness on public-sector pay policy before the situation became "irretrievable".
Another said that there was a feeling in Cabinet that the nurses "should have been allowed to cool their heels for a few days on the picket lines" before their claim was conceded.
Substantive negotiations in the dispute concluded last Thursday. Reliable sources say that the LRC did not reconvene the talks because a mandate on improved terms was not forthcoming. Yesterday's intervention was seen as a "last-ditch attempt by the commission to avert a strike".
Management is prepared to offer increases in line with those secured by most other groups of workers in the public service under the local bargaining clause of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work. The nurses' award was worth double the amount secured by the remainder of the public service.
Ironically, previous attempts by paramedics to break the link with nurses, when the latter were less well-paid, were rejected both by government and health services management.
Last night, the general secretary of IMPACT, Mr Peter McLoone, said: "Regrettably, this strike is going ahead because the Government has deliberately set aside every pay agreement, every Labour Court recommendation and every arbitration finding concerning paramedics, collectively and individually, in recent years. The Government is contradicting every pin it has ever taken in the past."