As hospitals brace themselves to provide emergency cover today, with staffing levels reduced to a quarter by the nurses' strike, nursing leaders are expected to come under strong pressure from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to modify their pay demands.
The first all-out strike by the State's 28,000 nurses begins at 8 a.m. today. The Nursing Alliance is to meet the ICTU general purposes committee this afternoon. The alliance leaders will be told bluntly that further large pay increases cannot be contained within the parameters of social partnership.
Congress is likely to offer help in "tweaking" the £100 million Labour Court award to maximise the benefits nurses can expect in areas such as allowances, where the risk of "knock-on" claims is limited, but trade-union leaders will spell out to the alliance that unless there is a significant change in its negotiating stance, no speedy resolution of the dispute is in prospect.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, met the alliance for three hours of exploratory talks yesterday. Both sides described the atmosphere as "good and workmanlike". Afterwards Mr Cowen said he would be reporting on the deliberations to the Cabinet this morning.
There was no discussion of the substantive issues, Mr Cowen said. "We wanted to know the context in which we can discuss those issues within existing partnership structures and we had a good discussion about how we can do that."
The Minister said both sides were "going to work hard from now on to see with the social partners if we can construct a forum and a process that meets the requirements of both sides fairly and reasonably".
He said he believed the dispute could be resolved because there was "a common commitment on trying to devise a process and use a bit of imagination to resolve it. But it can't be dealt with in isolation".
Mr Cowen will be consulting the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation, as well as Government colleagues. However, it is expected that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, and the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, will determine the Government's final bargaining position.
The chairman of the alliance, Mr Liam Doran, was maintaining after the meeting with Mr Cowen that it was still possible to meet the nurses' objectives. "No one said it would be easy," he added, "but we have to change mindsets". He believed allowances for nurses was an area where significant progress could be made in negotiations.
The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter Cassells, also welcomed the meeting between Mr Cowen and the alliance. Last night he said there was now an urgent need to resolve the dispute.
While he praised nurses for their unstinting care and commitment to patients over many years, "without due recognition or reward", he also said the ICTU would "continue to work with public service unions to achieve a new and fair pay reward system for public servants that will not automatically result in knock-on claims".
Mr Cassells said that "because of the unique and special nature of healthcare services, and the uncharted waters being navigated in this dispute, it is essential that both sides operate with great care and sensitivity to the needs of service users".
It is possible that talks between ICTU, IBEC and the Government will be the next step in trying to end the dispute. These would aim at providing a basis for direct negotiations between the nursing unions and the Health Service Employers' Agency. In the circumstances, it is hard to see an early end to the strike.