Health services face even greater disruption from Friday when some 45,000 nurses currently engaged in industrial action escalate their protest by withdrawing from doing any overtime.
The move, announced by the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) last night, is expected to have a major impact across all services and represents the most serious escalation of the dispute to date. It could lead to beds being closed, as hospitals depend on overtime every day to staff all of their beds. Emergency cover could be affected.
The executives of the two unions said that they had decided yesterday to instruct members to work only contracted hours from Friday. "From that time members will receive an explicit instruction not to work overtime or provide additional shifts on an agency basis," they said.
Des Kavanagh, general secretary of the PNA, said that the move was in retaliation for the HSE's threat to deduct 13.16 per cent from nurses' pay from Friday. The HSE has said it will cut pay because nurses are involved in a work-to-rule under which they are refusing to deal with non-essential phone calls or carry out clerical or IT duties.
Their industrial action is now in its seventh week and is said to be costing the HSE €3 million a week. "This overtime ban has a far greater potential impact than a full strike," Mr Kavanagh said.
A HSE spokesman said that the overtime ban, in addition to the work-to-rule, would result in "a serious contraction of services".
He added that the unions' statement underscored the point being made by the HSE all along in the dispute. "How can you, in a system that relies on overtime, reduce their core hours overnight . . . On the one hand, the nursing unions tell us it should be simple to give them a date for reduced hours, yet on the other hand they warn of [ the] grave consequences of an overtime ban," he said.
The nurses are seeking a 10.6 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour week. At present, they work a 39-hour week.
The INO and PNA are still considering a High Court challenge to the HSE's decision to deduct their pay.
In addition, they are awaiting written details of a proposal from the Taoiseach last Thursday that an independent international expert be appointed to look at whether the hours of nurses could be reduced.
Minister for Health Mary Harney told reporters in Dublin yesterday that the Taoiseach's proposal was "put on the table two weeks ago at the talks, and unfortunately it wasn't acceptable at that time".
She added: "We have said in those talks that we can reduce the working time by one hour on a cost-neutral basis by next March . . . and we secondly said we would establish a process to examine what would be required if we were to reduce the working week to 35 hours. We weren't committing to do that, but we were committing to a process to examine what would be required if we wanted to do that. And unfortunately two weeks ago that wasn't accepted. I hope it could be accepted, and I think it could pave the way for a resolution of this dispute at the moment."
Meanwhile, nurses will stop work for two hours at every public hospital and mental health facility in the State tomorrow.
More than 300 patient appointments were cancelled yesterday when nurses stopped work for three hours at three acute hospitals in Dublin, Kildare and Sligo. The stoppages also affected mental health services in Kildare, Sligo and at St Ita's hospital in Portrane, Dublin.
Ms Harney admitted that the dispute had the potential to go on "for an awful long time".