Psychiatric nurses to seek pay increases of over €5,000 a year

Psychiatric nurses are to seek increases of more than €5,000 per year in the forthcoming public-service pay talks with the Government. They say they want pay parity with therapy grades in the health service.

The general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), Peter Hughes, is expected to tell his union's annual conference in Carlow on Thursday that disparity in salaries between his members and therapy grades must be ended as part of any new public-service agreement to succeed the Lansdowne Road accord.

The PNA executive board is expected to table a motion at the conference that any proposed deal that does not address the pay-parity issue should be rejected.

“It is imperative that nurses are treated as no less a professional than the therapy grades, and our salary scale needs to replicate that of the therapy grade,” said Mr Hughes.

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The starting point of the salary scale for staff nurses in mental-health services is €29,122, whereas the starting rate for therapy grades is €34,969. The pay rates vary by about €5,000-€6,000 along the scales.

Mr Hughes is expected to tell the conference: “ If there is not substantial progress made in relation to [pay parity] in the pay talks, I believe we should reject any proposed pay deal and commence a campaign to deliver a fair and attractive salary for nurses.

“We have suffered, in a very painful way, with pay reductions of up to 25 per cent over the past eight years, and I say to Government, ‘It is now your turn to deliver by appreciating and valuing our nurses’.”

The PNA is also seeking in the forthcoming talks to end what it describes as an anomaly under which its members are paid less in certain cases than healthcare assistants.

Mr Hughes is expected to tell the conference that “this anomaly leads to the ridiculous situation where a staff nurse, with a four-year honours degree, is responsible for the supervision of healthcare assistants, yet up until year five are paid less than those healthcare assistants who are on the maximum point of their pay scale”.