Is it possible that the Local Government Staff Negotiations Board briefed, presumably, by the Department of Health is not aware of the level of anger and frustration among the nursing profession? Is it conceivable that the Government and the Minister for Health have not briefed themselves on the degree to which their predecessors in office have effectively ignored the many legitimate claims made on behalf of nurses over the past decade and a half? Has none of them studied the extent to which nursing salaries have slipped over the years relative to those paid to, for instance, teachers or social workers?
The outcome of the recent talks between the board and the Nursing Alliance (uniquely formed by all four trade unions which represent nurses) would strongly suggest that nobody in authority has been listening clearly to what nurses have been saying, or watching what, all over the country, nurses have been doing. An offer has been made which falls disastrously short of meeting the needs or the deserts of the nursing profession and, predictably, the union negotiators are recommending that their members should reject the offer.
The time that is now to be taken to complete a formal ballot on the offer will mean that a further ballot to take industrial action in pursuit of what many people perceive as legitimate claims will be deferred by about a month. But it seems clear already that, despite requests by the Minister for Health that the nurses should not go on strike, strike action will indeed follow.
The determination of both the unions and the profession to observe due process simply means that there are a few weeks more negotiating time to do something better for the dedication of all those nurses for whom a withdrawal of services from their patients is anathema.
The problems of the nurses are substantial and among them is the traditional, and rather sentimental, public image of their profession as angelic Florence Nightingales. While this image is well justified by nurses' great capacity for caring, it tends to discourage realistic appreciation of the great technical skills and hard edged responsibilities which are an inherent component of the work of the modern nursing profession. Another problematic image (in this State more than in many others) is that of the profession as being predominantly female, an image which is incoherently associated with the unthinking premise that women are somehow entitled to a lower level of remuneration than men. The rate of pay should be for the job rather than the gender, and this reasonable idea has very recently been given legal substance by the European Union Court in Luxembourg a point which the Minister and his advisers will do well to recognise.
What is now important is that, in the time granted by the unions as they organise and complete their ballots, the Government and its agencies should apply themselves to devising an offer that may prove more equitable and more acceptable to the nurses. The outcomes of the ballots are already predictable, so further negotiations are inevitable. The Government should go into those negotiations with a more clear headed appreciation of how much the nursing services are worth to the citizens of the State in terms of both the humanitarian qualities of the nurses and the huge skills and responsibilities required of them by way of their professionalism. It would be as unfair to them as to their patients if they were forced into even limited industrial action in pursuit of their claims.
So let Mr Noonan and his advisers examine objectively the relativities of nurses' salaries as they are, compared with what they were in the early 1980s, beside the salaries of teachers, health service administrators and social workers. Let them assess as objectively as they can the critical responsibilities of the different groups whose work loads they examine. Let them bear in mind the European Court's judgment in respect of the remuneration of professionals and the predominant gender of their professions. And let them look at the structural changes in the nursing profession that the nurses have sought for years past. Let them try to do true justice to a profession that has been neglected.