The Government's attitude to next week's strike by nurses was sharply attacked by the Opposition as Fine Gael moved a Private Member's Motion demanding talks between the sides.

The motion, which will be voted on tonight, also calls on the Government and the nursing unions to agree to a cooling-off period to find a solution to the impasse before strike action.

It deplored the "confrontational and condescending stance" taken by the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, and his "vilification" of nurses.

The Fine Gael spokesman on health, Mr Alan Shatter, said the strike, scheduled to begin on Tuesday, would rock the foundations of the public health service and have disastrous consequences for many patients originally scheduled for surgery in the coming weeks.

He said the inability of the Minister's representatives to agree the protocols for the care of patients compounded the tragic difficulties with which those who required, and would require, hospital care were confronted.

The withdrawal of public health nurses was a serious threat to the health and well-being of many elderly within local communities.

He said patients were already being sent home from hospitals. Hospital beds were being left vacant, while scheduled operations were being cancelled. People with life-threatening illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, were being told that essential inpatient hospital procedures were either being postponed or could not be scheduled.

"It should never have come to this. It has because of the gross incompetence of the Minister for Health and his failure to play a proactive role in the running of our health service."

Mr Shatter said it did not require great insight to recognise that nurses believed that the fundamental manner in which their profession had changed was still not fully recognised and their skills were undervalued.

He said the dispute should be put in context, adding that in June 34,000 patients were waiting for in-patient hospital treatment.

He said Tallaght Hospital had four theatres uncommissioned since it opened in June of last year, while other units also remained unused or under-utilised. Last June the hospital had an inpatient hospital waiting list of 1,658.

The Labour spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, said if the strike went ahead it would do incalculable long-term damage to the fabric of healthcare. "The tragedy is that if we had a good, creative government we should not even be contemplating such a prospect. Even a competent one would mean that we would not be here seeking an eleventh-hour reprieve from a Government that seems incapable of understanding what is required of it."

She claimed that instead of dealing with the problem the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, and Mr Cowen had retired to the bunker. Their response to the deepening crisis was to keep out of sight while lobbing verbal grenades at nursing professionals.

"This morning the Minister for Health tried a different tactic. He pleaded with the nurses, rather like the battering husband who deludes himself that all will be forgiven if he tries a bit of cajoling on the wife."

Traditionally, nursing had been a largely female profession, said Ms McManus. "Like thousands of other women who contributed their labour to building up the Irish State, and who helped to make this country the success story it is, nurses were poorly recompensed and poorly recognised."

Mr Cowen, reiterating what the Taoiseach had told the Dail earlier, said the Government's approach was correct and responsible. "It is consistent with the position taken by the rainbow coalition in 1996."

Nurses, he added, needed to understand that under the present arrangements it was not possible to disregard existing relativities. "The reality is that nurses' pay cannot be dealt with in isolation from other public service groups. As the Taoiseach recently pointed out it is simply implausible in the present context to suppose that developments in any part of the public service can be viewed in isolation and will not have a domino effect on other groups, sectors or, indeed, on society as a whole."

Given the enormous amount of time and effort devoted by the Labour Court to finding a solution it was a matter of deep personal regret to him, as a former minister for labour, that three of the four nursing unions saw fit to recommend rejection of the package so soon after it was issued.