Some 26 patients due to attend Dublin's Beaumont Hospital for diagnostic procedures and outpatient consultations this morning have been told to stay at home as a result of the ongoing nurses' dispute.
The hospital is one of three where nurses will stop work for an hour this morning from 11am as part of their ongoing campaign for better pay and shorter working hours.
Stoppages will also take place at Roscommon County Hospital and Roscommon mental health services as well as at St Ita's Hospital in Portrane, Dublin, which incorporates St Joseph's services for the intellectually disabled.
Simultaneously, 40,000 nurses who are members of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) will continue industrial action at all hospitals across the State in the form of a work-to-rule which began 12 days ago. Under this, nurses are not dealing with non-essential phone calls or carrying out clerical or IT duties.
Barry O'Brien of the Health Service Executive (HSE) indicated yesterday that the issue of whether the executive should continue to give nurses on the work-to-rule full pay "remains under review".
And while some HSE sources said such a move was unlikely, Liam Doran, general secretary of the INO, said if nurses had their pay docked for the work-to-rule their campaign of action would escalate. "It would grossly inflame the situation," he said.
He pointed out that health managers themselves, when they engaged in a work-to-rule at the time of the changeover from the old health board system to the HSE, did not have their pay cut.
Séamus Murphy, industrial relations officer with the PNA, said he did not think the HSE could justify docking nurses' pay.
Nurses are not being paid for the one-hour work stoppages.
Meanwhile, Beaumont Hospital said all its services, with two exceptions, will run as normal today during the work stoppage.
"Six out of 42 scheduled endoscopy procedures have been rescheduled. These will take place within the next week. Twenty out of 70 scheduled appointments have been rescheduled in one surgical outpatients clinic and these will take place over the next two weeks," it said.
A spokeswoman for Roscommon County Hospital said no operations or outpatient appointments had been cancelled. And she stressed that all daycare centres which formed part of the Roscommon mental health services, which will also be hit by the hour-long work stoppages, would remain open.
Meanwhile, a HSE spokeswoman said St Ita's Hospital and St Joseph's Intellectual Disability Service hopes to provide services with minimum disruption to clients during the work stoppage.
"There will be some restrictions on the mental health and intellectual disability day services, outreach services and out-patient clinics. The majority of appointments have been re- scheduled for that afternoon and clients notified," she said.
Meanwhile, Waterford Regional Hospital is continuing to cancel non-urgent elective surgery on a daily basis. A spokesman said nine such appointments were cancelled last week.
There are still no signs of a resolution and the INO and PNA, who are seeking a 10.6 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour week, will be announcing further work stoppages on Sunday, which will hit other hospitals next Tuesday.
Gerry O'Dwyer, of the HSE's national hospitals office, said there had been a drop-off in outpatients since the dispute began and he stressed anyone with an appointment should turn up unless they had been informed their appointment was cancelled.