A wide-ranging claim for improved pay and conditions being pursued by the country's nurses would cost the taxpayer over €1 billion, according to the Department of Health.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has lodged the claim with the Health Service Executive - Employers Agency and negotiations are expected to begin shortly at the Labour Relations Commission.
The current annual pay bill for the country's 33,000 nurses is just over €2 billion.
In a message to nurses, the president of the INO, Madeline Spiers, said they should make no apologies for wanting the best conditions for themselves.
She outlined details of eight claims that have been lodged with the employers agency, which represents health service employers, and said the INO would be demanding a resolution of all of them.
The first claim is for a 35-hour working week. The second is for parity with childcare workers to give nurses a starting salary of over €30,000 a year. Retrospection is also being sought.
The third claim is for equal pay with therapeutic grades like physiotherapists while the fourth is for a review of premium payments for shift work.
The fifth claim is for a Dublin allowance of €3,800 a year to give nurses in the capital extra pay to compensate for higher living costs.
The sixth claim is for the introduction of a preceptorship (teaching) allowance to cover the training of new staff. The seventh claim is for a review of the career structure to create more nursing specialist grades while the final claim is for pension entitlements for days lost during the nurses strike of 1999.
A spokesman for the department said concession of the claim would cost the taxpayer €1 billion initially, with an ongoing cost of over €600 million per year.
The department estimates that the cost of reducing the working week to 35 hours would require an extra 4,000 nurses and the total cost would be €194 million. The Dublin weighting allowance would cost an extra €50 million with potentially huge knock-on costs for the whole public service.
The concession of the claim for parity with childcare workers would cost €184 million in a full year and retrospection would add another €460 million. Parity with therapeutic grades would cost another €208 million, according to the spokesman. The total cost of the claim came to €1.1 billion, the spokesman said.
Writing in the INO's newsletter, World of Irish Nursing, Ms Spiers said nurses were a powerful lobby group of over 32,000 people.
"The key to the success of achieving what we want lies with all those involved recognising that nurses and midwives are deadly serious about having these outstanding issues addressed. This will be a make or break year for us. The first degree programme nurses will be graduating this year and I believe they will not tolerate the pay and conditions that we have put up with for such a long time," she said.
"Think of the four hours each week that you will save over a 48-week year and what it could mean to you. Those four hours add up to 192 hours a year or 24 days' holidays. Something that is worth taking action over. The organisation has been seeking this since the 1980s. Either we negotiate it this time or we take industrial action.
"Now that you know what the claims are, are you prepared to participate in this process?" Ms Spiers asked the country's nurses. "There is no room for apathy or introspection.
"The public appreciates what we do and supports us. Let us take action and stand together to achieve our aims.
"Be involved in the INO at local, regional and national level and we will achieve fair pay, good working conditions and a good health service," she said.
Ms Spiers's comments reflect the increasingly independent stand being taken by the INO, as talks continue on a new national partnership deal involving unions, employers and the Government.
The nurses' union has already opted out of the public service benchmarking process, despite a warning from the Department of Finance that unions will not be allowed "unilaterally to pick and choose" from the outcome.
INO deputy general secretary Dave Hughes, writing in the newsletter, insisted the union was "rejecting the cosy consensus which suggests that individual unions must bury their members' legitimate complaints, in the interests of the overall goal of maintaining industrial peace and stability".