Minister for Health Mary Harney has said a proposed forum which would look at new working arrangements in the health services and changes in work practices, could deliver a reduced working week for nurses. Martin Wallreports.
However she said the Government could not look at nurses' working hours in isolation.
Nurses yesterday staged lunchtime protests in Limerick and Galway as part of their campaign for improved pay and conditions.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), which represent about 40,000 nurses, are to begin a nationwide work to rule from Monday week and have threatened rolling work stoppages after that date.
The nurses are seeking a 10 per cent pay increase, the introduction of a 35-hour week and a special allowance for those working in Dublin.
Ms Harney said the pay issue had "already been decided" and a 10 per cent increase over 27 months was available under the Towards 2016 partnership agreement. The Government was open to looking at the issue of pay anomalies between nurses and some social care professionals in the context of the benchmarking process.
Nurses, she said, could have a 35-hour week if it did not mean the Government having to employ an additional 4,000 staff to meet the extra workload involved. "We want to see the nursing organisations come into a forum where changing work practices would be at the heart of the agenda, but this cannot mean employing 4,000 more nurses to do the work that is currently done," she said.
Ms Harney said she wanted to empower nurses to prescribe, to run chronic illness clinics and to order diagnostics.
INO general secretary Liam Doran said his organisation had not been formally invited by the Government or health service management to attend any forum or to have talks about the establishment of a forum.
He said the INO had consistently indicated it would take part in a forum provided it would be able to deal with its priority issues.
He said ultimately it would have to deal with pay. Mr Doran said that hospital consultants would also be part of any forum on work practice changes in the health sector.
However he said consultants had a separate forum to deal with specific issues of pay and conditions with management.
At the Galway protest, INO president Madeleine Spiers said that nurses were the "dark horses" of the approaching general election.
"This is a message for Bertie . . . ignore us at your peril," she told a gathering of about 250 INO and PNA members and several local TDs outside University College Hospital Galway.
PNA general secretary Des Kavanagh said the demonstrations should serve as a "health warning to the Government".
INO industrial relations officer Mary Fogarty said she was delighted with the turnout of about 400 nurses at the protest at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
"We're here today as part of our campaign to protest for a 35-hour week and a pay increase for nurses and midwives," she said.
