Madam, - I'm sure I'm not the only person who has noted the wide disparity between a nurse's salary and the generous pay offer rejected by hospital consultants.
A phone call to the Irish Nurses' Organisation elicited the information that a nurse with 10 years' experience of working in one of the major Dublin hospitals can expect to command a salary of approximately €42,000 for a 39-hour week.
According to recent reports in The Irish Times, medical organisations have rejected an offer by the HSE to pay consultants who agree to work exclusively in public hospitals a salary between €180,000 and €205,000 a year for a 39-hour week, with the added incentive of a performance-related bonus of up to 20 per cent. In other words, they have rejected a potential salary of almost five grand a week.
What other conclusion can one draw from this comparison but that consultants are greedy?
- Yours, etc,
JOE PATTON, Chapelizod Court, Chapelizod, Dublin 20.
Madam, - There can be no clearer or more depressing illustration of the "glass ceiling" than the sea of men's faces and voices representing nurses in a profession which must be well over 80 per cent female and where men are relative newcomers.
- Is mise,
CLÍONA SAIDLÉAR, Monalee Manor, Galway.