NURSES AT the emergency department of the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick, who have already staged two work stoppages in protest at overcrowding, are to meet today to consider further action.
The move comes after 11 hours of talks at the Labour Relations Commission failed to produce an agreement between Health Service Executive management in the Mid-West and nursing unions.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and Siptu blamed management intransigence for the impasse.
They said the HSE had refused to employ a nurse, or redeploy any nurse, on a 24/7 basis to the emergency department from any location in the Mid-West to immediately care for admitted patients on trolleys.
They also claimed management had refused to utilise some of the 100 daycare beds within the hospital for emergency unit patients on a temporary basis pending full review and redesignation of some daycare beds to inpatient services.
The HSE, the unions said, had also refused to discuss any element of the recommendations in relation to the emergency unit at the hospital drawn up by the Department of Health’s new special delivery unit.
Those recommendations were presented to unions on Wednesday. The unions maintained that management had argued these required clarifications.
Management, they added, had only offered to redeploy one nurse from the hospital’s outpatient department to the emergency unit from 10am to 4pm on a Monday to Friday basis.
In a statement last night, the HSE in the Mid-West described the INMO/Siptu statement as “most unhelpful, clearly targeted and gross misrepresentation of what actually occurred” at the LRC talks.
It said this was a most regrettable development.
“We have what we have and must use that to meet our priorities; there is no more than the 700 nurses already in Dooradoyle.
“We are still being prevented from a real review and change of rosters which could solve a lot of the pressures,” the HSE added.
A spokesman for Minister for Health James Reilly said the recommendations of the special delivery unit did not form part of the negotiations with the nursing unions.
He said the recommendations represented a blueprint for performance improvement which would be subject to implementation irrespective of the outcome of the talks with the unions.
Separately, the HSE has confirmed there are to be further bed closures at Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, Dublin, in a bid to deal with a current €5 million deficit.
Staff were told yesterday the surgical day ward would close between October 24th and November 6th. It will reopen on November 7th to facilitate urgent cases and will close again between December 19th and January 8th, 2012.
The HSE said urgent cases will still be managed during the closure periods.
In addition, 12 inpatient surgical beds at the hospital will close on a gradual basis from October 5th.
Staff were told that, without remedial action, the hospital was facing a potential deficit of over €7 million by the end of the year.
The Socialist Party councillor Ruth Coppinger, who highlighted the cuts yesterday, said Government Ministers had all said emergency services at the hospital were safe.
“Because of the spotlight on the AE, they are cynically forcing local management to cut the operations at the hospital,” she said.