Nurses will bring the health services to a standstill in October unless the benchmarking process delivers a pay rise of 30 per cent, the Irish Nurses' Organisation warned yesterday.
The organisation also warned that it would not co-operate with the commissioning of extra beds unless the required number of nurses was in place.
INO general secretary Mr Liam Doran received a standing ovation and cheers at the annual conference when he said that if necessary, the organisation would "bring the health service to a standstill and leave it at a standstill" until nurses' demands were met.
The message was repeated by INO president Ms Clare Spillane, who told delegates, "This organisation, if benchmarking does not deliver what nurses and midwives are entitled to and deserve, will mobilise in a manner which will severely disrupt the health services."
If nurses' demands for parity of pay and working hours with paramedics are not met by benchmarking, "then we make no apology for initiating a campaign which will ensure we secure our pay agenda".
The INO is seeking parity with physiotherapists, speech therapists and other paramedics. Explaining how the 30 per cent figure was arrived at, Mr Doran said nurses at the top of the staff-nurse scale were paid 11 per cent less than paramedics. The shorter working hours for paramedics (35 hours a week, as against 39 hours for nurses) is the equivalent of a 9 per cent pay disparity. In addition, the nurses want whatever increase the paramedics themselves get out of benchmarking.
"If benchmarking doesn't give us parity, we will mobilise in October," he said. Mr Doran told delegates that industrial action, if taken, would be carried out "with the least pain to us and the most pain to the employers". At the start of the conference, delegates had voted for a new procedure for the escalation of strikes.
Under the procedure, local strike committees can withdraw nurses completely from general medical and surgical wards on the seventh day of a strike except for critical intensive-care patients or units. This arose from complaints after the 1999 strike that the willingness of nurses to provide emergency cover was exploited by hospital managers.
Ms Spillane also warned yesterday that the introduction of extra beds would be halted unless the required number of extra nurses was in place.
"The day is gone when this organisation will agree to open up services on the promise that adequate staff will be found at a later date," she said. "In short my message is, if you have no nurses you will have no more beds."
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, who was received warmly by delegates, said in his address that of the 709 extra acute hospital beds promised for this year, 120 have been provided and a further 50 were due by the end of this month.
Mr Doran said delays in bringing beds into use would worsen as the year went on because of the shortage of nurses to staff them. Fifteen hundred nurses have been lost to the health service in the past 18 months, he said. Any increase in nurse numbers had been achieved by bringing in nurses from outside the EU. Young Irish nurses were either leaving the profession or going to work abroad.