Psychiatric nurses to take industrial action over staffing row

Psychiatric nurses are set to begin industrial action in mental health facilities around the country within the next fortnight or so in a dispute over recruitment and retention of staff.

The Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) said its governing board would decide at a meeting on Thursday, June 9th on the nature and time of the industrial action.

The union said that in a ballot 87 per cent of members voted in favour of industrial action up to and including strikes.

PNA general secretary-designate, Peter Hughes, said the level of support from psychiatric nurses for industrial action reflected "the utter frustration at the growing understaffing in the mental health services at both acute and community levels, and the inability of the HSE to bring forward a realistic plan to address the crisis in the short and long term".

“ Nurses are not prepared to stand by and watch the demand for acute and community mental health services growing while knowing that this demand cannot be met with the current levels of understaffing with up to 600 nursing vacancies currently and a further 400 to arise from forecasted retirement.”

“This situation is simply unsustainable, and staff have been left struggling to maintain acute and community services with no prospect of investing in the development of urgently needed new services.”

The PNA said it met Minister for Health Simon Harris last week and set out proposals to address the immediate staffing shortages throughout the services and a plan for the growing demand for newly qualified psychiatric nurses.

“We need to see a comprehensive plan from the HSE that will include measures to retain existing staff in our services and significantly grow the number of student training places for psychiatric nursing.’

The PNA represents about 5,000 psychiatric nurses and student psychiatric nurses across the country.

The HSE said it was engaging with the PNA and would continue to do so to try and resolve issues identified by the union.

“We are hopeful that this continued engagement will result in a positive outcome,” the HSE said in a statement.