A 24-hour strike by ambulance staff on Tuesday will pose a risk to patient safety but emergency cover will in be place and patients in need of urgent medical assistance can still contact 999 or 112, according to the National Ambulance Service (NAS).
NAS clinical director Dr Cathal O’Donnell said the day would be “very challenging” for the service, with more than half of staff normally rostered to work expected to be out on strike.
However, he said additional clinical staff are being drafted in to provide advice over the phone. Managers, who are clinicians, will be assisting on calls, and some private services will be used.
O’Donnell said about 1,100 emergency calls are received every day, with 42 per cent of those in the highest priority category. While those taking calls are trained and the system in place is well-tested, it is not possible to be certain about the seriousness of some cases from a telephone conversation alone. With delays in responding to a significant proportion of calls inevitable, O’Donnell said: “I would be worried about patient safety.”
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Priority will be given to time-sensitive cases involving cardiac arrest, life-threatening injuries or other issues of similar urgency. Other patients have been advised to contact emergency numbers as normal, but where people feel they can make their own way to an emergency department or obtain help from a GP surgery or out-of-hours service, injury unit or pharmacy, they should consider that, he suggested.
All services apart from the ambulance service will be operating normally, he said, and while there was generally a drop in the number of calls when industrial action takes place, “we can’t assume that that will be the case in this instance”.
The long-running dispute involving about 2,000 members of Siptu and Unite is over grading and pay related to a programme of modernisation within the service.
It was the subject of a report in 2020. Two sets of proposals brokered by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) were rejected by staff last year when more than 70 per cent of those who participated in the ballot voted against.
The HSE said the proposals included provision for pay increases of between 3 and 14 per cent, in addition to those due under national public sector pay deals.
The unions, however, said the action was tied to future changes in work practices, when changes already in place had not been adequately addressed.
The HSE has called for a return to talks under the auspices of the WRC or Labour Court. However, John McCamley, Siptu sector organiser, said there was a precondition that they would discuss future changes.
“We’re not averse to that but we need the historic issues to be dealt with first.”
The strike, beginning on Tuesday, will run from 8am to 8am on Wednesday, and if the dispute is not resolved, a 48-hour strike is scheduled to start next Tuesday, with a 72-hour one the week after that. Those, O’Donnell suggested, would pose an even greater patient safety risk.
