Nurses yesterday named 52 hospitals and services targeted for stoppages next week in an escalation of their industrial action - but they also offered a glimmer of hope of a breakthrough.
Both the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) said in a joint statement they were immediately available for "meaningful negotiations" without pre-conditions.
However, they also warned they were prepared for a long dispute, with longer stoppages, in support of their claims for a 10.6 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour working week.
Des Kavanagh, general secretary of the PNA said: "We're in this absolutely for a long campaign, and because of the way we have structured the campaign we can go on for months without any problem."
The unions representing 44,000 nurses detailed their planned new actions in Ballybofey, Co Donegal, where the PNA was holding its annual conference.
The escalation means that by next Friday all major acute hospitals, together with the mental health services in the same geographic area, will have been hit by stoppages. More than 10,000 nurses will have been directly involved.
But the nurses vehemently rejected suggestions they were putting patients at risk and insisted they remained fully committed to providing a full range of direct nursing and midwifery care to all patients.
Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the Health Service Executive, insisted at a press briefing in Dublin that the nurses' dispute was bringing pain to patients and to the HSE as an organisation. He said he also believed it also "extremely troubling to most nurses on the ground".
He said the work-to-rule by nurses, now coming to the end of its third week, was having a major impact, much more so than the one-hour work stoppages, because it operated 24 hours a day.
During the work-to-rule they are refusing to deal with non-essential phone calls or carry out clerical or IT duties.
It was creating "significant risk situations" and there were lists of examples, he said.
"How can anybody know that a ringing phone is not for urgent assistance and we certainly have seen that as a problem," he said. If the dispute continued, services to patients would have to be cut as staff were overstretched, he added.
On suggestions by the nursing unions that the HSE was scaremongering by highlighting at least one "near miss" for a patient when nurses could not be contacted after he had a post operative haemorrhage at a Dublin hospital, Prof Drumm said: "If somebody is trying to tell us that the people in the hospitals across the country . . . are phoning in incidents that didn't happen, I don't accept that."
Issues like this were raised locally with the unions, he said. But Liam Doran, general secretary of the INO, said the post operative haemorrhage was not brought to the union's attention.
He added: "We stand over our statement that nurses and midwives are at work. They are fulfilling all direct patient care and we do not believe we have in any way compromised that patient care."
The unions said, meanwhile, they believed it was time for the Government to step in and help resolve the dispute and they were critical of the lack of support from Opposition parties.
INO & PNA STOPPAGES: where and when
Wednesday April 25th/11am - noon:
-Mercy Hospital, Cork
- North Lee mental health services
- University College Hospital, Galway
-Galway mental health services
- Letterkenny General Hospital
- Donegal mental health services
- Monaghan General Hospital
-Monaghan mental health and intellectual disability services
- Naas General Hospital
- Kildare mental health services
- St John's Hospital, Limerick
- Tallaght Hospital, Dublin
- West Dublin mental health services
- St Luke's Hospital, Kilkenny
- Kilkenny mental health services
2.30pm - 3.30pm:
- Cavan General Hospital
- Cavan mental health services
- Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, Dublin
- St Brendan's Hospital/area six mental health services
- South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital, Cork
- South Lee mental health services
- Waterford Regional Hospital
- Waterford mental health services
- Mallow General Hospital
- North Cork mental health services
- Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar
- Longford/Westmeath mental health services
- St Michael's Hospital, Dún Laoghaire
Friday April 27th/ 11am - noon:
- Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe
- East Galway mental health services
- Mayo General Hospital, Castlebar
- Áras Attracta, Castlebar
- Mayo mental health services
- Cork University and St Mary's orthopaedic hospital
- South Lee mental health services
- Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda
- Louth mental health services
- Mid-West Regional Hospital, Limerick
- Limerick mental health services
- St Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown
- Wicklow mental health services
- Mater Hospital, Dublin
- Dublin north-central mental health services
- St Vincent's, Fairview/department of psychiatry, Mater Hospital
- Our Lady's Hospital, Navan
- Meath mental health services
- Tralee General Hospital
- North Kerry mental health services
- Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore
- Offaly mental health services
- Wexford General Hospital
- Wexford mental health services