Industrial action by psychiatric nurses could escalate, says secretary

Psychiatric Nurses Association open to talks with HSE to resolve issue around vacancies

The General Secretary designate of the Psychiatric Nurses Association says that they are open to talks with the HSE as their members hold a day of industrial action.

However, Peter Hughes warned that the situation could escalate as nursing vacancies remain unfilled.

Today’s action involves the day shift, he said. Nurses will not carry out administrative duties, answering phones, filling in stat forms.

“Next Monday we will hold a national executive meeting to see if will escalate to phase 2 and then phase 3,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.

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Industrial action is ongoing and will be built on in stages, added Mr Hughes.

“We have concerns about the mental health service, these have not been addressed.

“There has been a nursing shortage for a number of years, the services are totally reliant on overtime, agency and the good will of staff, we may look at the option of asking our members not to volunteer to do any more overtime.

“At the moment there are over 600 vacancies. We estimate that over the next six months that could rise to 1,000. The issue needs to be addressed.

“We need to look at retention, we need to retain the nurses we have, and we need to put measures in place to ensure the nurses we have remain in the system.

“We need to look at recruitment, we need to significantly increase the number of nurses being trained, and we need to streamline the recruitment process because it can take up to six months and over to recruit a nurse into the service.

“We’re in a competitive market with the UK for nurses, and with private hospitals and nursing homes, who are giving incentives to nurses to go work with them.”

Mr Hughes said the PNA is open to talking. “Our ballot was 87 per cent in favour of industrial action, that highlighted the frustration of our members.

"We gave three weeks notice, which is above the norm, in order to facilitate talks, we've had three meetings with the HSE and the Department of Health and one meeting yesterday under the auspices of the WRC, we're very open to discussions and to get concrete proposals to address this.

“We would like to be going to our national executive next Monday with concrete proposals to resolve this issue.”