All operations are to proceed as scheduled today at Kerry General Hospital despite the continued suspension by the Health Service Executive (HSE) of electricians and other craftworkers in the south and southeast.
To date 11 operations have been cancelled at the Kerry hospital, 10 of them yesterday. Clinicians were not happy to proceed with them in the absence of emergency cover by electricians.
The HSE claimed the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) workers were not providing emergency cover, which the TEEU denies.
Tánaiste Brian Cowen said in the Dáil that the dispute must be resolved immediately so patients are not further inconvenienced. "It is an indication to me of how steep the incline seems to be to bring reform into the health services when we see this sort of disproportionate consequence arising out of what seems to be an issue that should be resolved in a commonsense manner," he said.
About 35 TEEU members have been suspended - mainly electricians but also plumbers and fitters. The HSE claims the dispute is about the failure of the TEEU members to agree to staff other than electricians changing light bulbs at Cork University Hospital. As a result pay rises due to the workers under parallel benchmarking were withheld.
The Labour Court ruled in March that "it was not unreasonable to expect electricians to co-operate with the requirement sought by management" and it recommended the sides should meet and agree a protocol on the changing of light bulbs.
Barry O'Brien, assistant national director of human resources with HSE South, said the HSE had engineering staff draw up the protocol and offered to have its implementation independently validated but the TEEU rejected this.
The TEEU wants an independent person to draw up the protocol and says this person's decisions should be binding on both sides but the HSE has rejected this. Mr O'Brien said the dispute was about whether or not the HSE could take small incremental steps to modernise the health service. It was not about trying to make electricians redundant, he said.