Striking SIPTU members were yesterday accused of not providing sufficient emergency cover to ensure adequate patient care on the first day of action affecting Co Clare's mental health services.
Mr Seamus McNulty of the Mid-Western Health Board made the claim as 120 SIPTU members placed pickets yesterday morning outside health service centres, including an acute psychiatric unit in Ennis.
The head of Clare health services said that the level of emergency cover was "very inadequate and in fact could compromise patient care".
Mr Denis Creedon, the area's director of psychiatric nursing, said that in the event of injury to patients or staff the health board would hold SIPTU responsible.
The indefinite strike action follows the suspension without pay last week of three receptionists by the health board for four weeks following a row between the three and the health board relating to new working conditions at Ennis's new €6 million acute psychiatric unit.
The action involves 120 SIPTU members, with half that number in the service's nursing staff.
Yesterday's strike affected a total of 341 patients throughout the county, with health board senior managers being drafted in to help feed and nurse patients.
With nursing staff from the Psychiatric Nurses' Association working as usual yesterday, SIPTU branch secretary Ms Mary O'Donnell rejected the health board claim relating to inadequate emergency cover.
She said: "We will ensure that where the board is below what we consider emergency cover, then we will provide it. The emergency cover we have provided is quite sufficient."
Mr McNulty said the action was totally unjustified.
"How any union can call strike action on behalf of three staff members who demanded to write their own job description, decide where they would work, how they would work and with whom they would work is impossible to understand."
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