The two nursing unions involved in the seven-week dispute over pay and conditions had their first meeting with the benchmarking body yesterday.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association had an hour-long meeting with the Public Service Benchmarking Body.
The meeting yesterday was procedural. The unions will now make written submissions to the benchmarking body, which must be in by July 18th.
A week later, the unions will outline their case directly to the body. At the same time, a job-evaluation process will be carried out by benchmarking officials, a process which is carried out across the public service.
The unions agreed to put their claim for a 10.6 per cent pay rise to the benchmarking process, having initially rejected benchmarking because of dissatisfaction at a previous award and a failure to secure changes they sought to the body's terms of reference.
They changed their stance following the intervention of the National Implementation Body (NIB), which recommended that the unions submit their pay claim to benchmarking in return for a reduction in the working week from 39 hours to 37.5 hours.
In addition, an independent commission is to examine how and when the unions' demand for a 35-hour week can be achieved.
INO deputy general secretary Dave Hughes said that the union was "cautiously confident" that the benchmarking process would work out for nurses.
"We have a task of work ahead of us to convince the body of the merits of our case, and we think we can do that."
The benchmarking body is currently evaluating all 120 grades in the Civil Service, part of the process under the terms of "Sustaining Progress".
