Nurses will walk off the wards in three hospitals next Wednesday when the Irish Nurses' Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association step up their campaign of industrial action over improved pay and working hours. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
While full details of the rolling work stoppages by the 40,000 members of the two unions will not be announced until Monday, union sources have indicated that three hospitals will be targeted - one of them a large Dublin teaching hospital. The others will be hospitals in the regions.
The rolling work stoppages are due to last between one and four hours, though initially it is expected they will be for one or two hours only. Different hospitals will be affected on different days.
Liam Doran, general secretary of the INO, has stressed that during the stoppages nurses will provide "essential cover and emergency cover".
In the meantime the work-to-rule by nurses, which began last Monday, continues. Under this, nurses are not answering non-essential telephone calls or carrying out clerical or IT duties.
The nurses are seeking a 10.6 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour week instead of 39 hours.
The Health Service Executive said yesterday the work-to-rule was having a serious effect, slowing down the admission and discharge of patients. It also claimed there were "risk issues" for patients and difficulties around nurses not answering phones in intensive care and coronary care wards. The nursing unions denied this.
Louise McMahon, a hospital network manager with the HSE, said a cancer specialist in the midwest was considering cancelling his oncology clinic next week.
Meanwhile, the INO rejected a call from the Irish Cancer Society to exempt from the dispute nurses caring for cancer patients. It said it had from the outset ensured the special relationship between clinical nurse specialists and individual named patients would not be compromised.
There was still no sign last night of the dispute being resolved. "We have heard nothing about talks. It's just stalemate," said Des Kavanagh, general secretary of the PNA.
Brendan Mulligan, assistant chief executive of the HSE employers' agency, said management would be inviting unions to meet them on Monday to discuss contingency plans for the work stoppages.