Nurses call for renegotiation of Lansdowne Road Agreement

Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) are calling for a renegotiation of the Lansdowne Road Agreement.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme, INMO general secretary Liam Doran said members "have not experienced the soft winds of recovery".

His call comes as members of the INMO in St Camillus Hospital, Limerick commenced a work to rule on Monday.

The industrial action comes some seven months on from notification by nurses to senior HSE managers that the clinical care of patients at the hospital is compromised due to ongoing unfilled nursing positions. Currently there are approximately 15 vacant nursing posts.

“The Minister for Finance has said that the emergency is over,” said Mr Doran. “We want a timeframe for rescinding pay cuts. The pace of restructuring will have be to be sped up. The public sector wants to see the recovery reflected in pay packets.”

However, Mr Doran warned that there was still a labour market problem within nursing as the low pay levels made it difficult to retain and attract staff.

He said: “No one is suggesting that we are out of the woods yet. The reality is that the health service is under resourced, it is still in crisis. We’ve had the worst March trolley figures ever, still haven’t got enough beds, still not enough staff.

“The reality is we haven’t got a health service big enough to deal with the demands being placed on it.”

Community care ‘invisible’

Meanwhile a new report commissioned by the INMO will be published on Monday which says that there is a disproportionate focus on acute care within the health service which has rendered community care nursing “invisible”.

Dr Amanda Phelan and Sandra McCarthy, of the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Sciences in UCD, compiled the report Missed Care - Community Nursing in Ireland.

Dr Phelan, speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, said community care nursing urgently needs to be reformed.

“There is an increasing older population especially over 85s, but only one in four gets visits,” she said.

The report highlights areas of mis-care and the fact that public health nurses are spending time on paperwork when they should be spending time providing care at the front line.

Dr Phelan said: “Root and branch change is needed - if the opportunity arises it should be done carefully.

“We are calling for a commission to be established to report within a year to determine roles that nursing and midwifery will play.”

She said: “There is a need to ensure that communications between acute care and community nursing are in place when people are being discharged. Then provide care packages that meet their needs. By providing appropriate care then we will reduce the numbers of people going into hospital.

She said the system is straining and that there is an urgent need for “confidence of care, not firefighting”.