Some 40,000 nurses and midwives around the State will continue to go to work as normal today and will provide the full range of direct patient care - but will refrain from "non-essential" duties such as answering telephones and undertaking clerical and IT work, union leaders said yesterday.
At a press conference in Dublin, Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO), said the nationwide work-to-rule would start at 8am today.
This could be escalated to include rolling regional work stoppages in the coming days and weeks. A decision on this will be taken at a meeting of the INO and Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) joint strategy committee tomorrow, following a meeting of the two unions' executives last night. However, an all-out strike is not currently being considered.
Addressing the press conference, Mr Doran said nurses and midwives were "older and wiser than we were in 1999."
"We won't be creating a situation where health employers can go home and leave it to unpaid nurses to maintain the health service," he said. "So our action this time round . . . is geared at discommoding the managers and maximising the nurses' and midwives' attention on the patient."
He added: "It won't be at the hands of nurses and midwives if there is inconvenience and delays. The responsibility for that, 60 days after the notice was served on them, is absolutely full square and 110 per cent on the health service employers."
Mr Doran said union leaders had gone into the National Implementation Body talks in "good faith", on the basis that management was going to be "open, creative and imaginative" in trying to address their concerns.
"Whether it's a long dispute or it's one of short duration, the outcome will see a 35-hour week for nursing staff and . . . the [ elimination of] the insult which sees people paid less than those reporting to them," he said.