THE Health Service Employers Association has formally requested IMPACT to exempt residential homes for the mentally handicapped and children in care from their current strike. The IMPACT executive is to consider the request at a meeting tomorrow, but union sources were not optimistic last night that it would comply.
The chief executive of the HSEA, Mr Gerard Barry, said it was making the request because the only alternative was to hire agency nurses who were not trained to deal with the type of clients involved. "We are seeking the exemption because there is really no satisfactory alternative.
On Monday night, IMPACT staff provided cover for five of the 45 residential childcare units in the Eastern Health Board. In other parts of the country the problem does not appear as acute.
Mr Barry said the problem was being tackled on a "night by night" basis. "Obviously, it is not a situation we are happy with."
There are more than 300 children and adolescents in residential care in the EHB area, most referred there through the courts. Much smaller numbers are in care in the other seven health boards. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 patients with mental handicap in residential centres but the problem is not as acute, as many house parents are nurses or can be replaced by qualified nursing staff.
IMPACT representative, Mr Sean McHugh, said his members in childcare centres were already working 39 hours without pay and were now being asked to provide night cover as well. "What the strike has done is highlight the lack of resources in an area that has so far been taken for granted."
Members had taken a very limited form of industrial action and would be hard to extend cover without removing them effectively from the strike. Mr McHugh said the feeling among members was the union should not impose instructions on them.
Earlier, the Resident Managers Association, the professional body for the staff involved, said its members very much regretted the position they had been put in. It called on the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, to acknowledge their request for pay parity with nursing grades.
Among the childcare services disrupted by the strike is schooling, because there is a "no driving" restriction during the dispute. Also, no new children are being admitted to homes and family access visits to children in care have been suspended.
Acute medical services are continuing to escape serious disruption. This is partly because 70 per cent of the admissions to major acute hospitals are emergency cases and many of the remaining 30 per cent of elective admissions do not require cover by paramedics.
However, the general secretary of IMPACT, Mr Peter McLoone, said yesterday, "Any dispute in the health services is an accident waiting to happen, because there just aren't enough early warning systems in place. That is why it is imperative now to find a solution to the industrial relations problem, -because we can't find solutions to all the cracks that will appear in the emergency cover.
"The reality is that you cannot run acute hospitals, in the long run, without the back-up of people like physiotherapists."
He also warned that the backlog in clinical services for children would add to the cost and long-term disruption a prolonged strike would bring to the health services.
Meanwhile, support for industrial action remained solid among the 3,500 paramedic grades involved in the dispute. The Green Party joined with Fianna Fail yesterday in calling for Government intervention to resolve the dispute.