Nurses strike will compromise patient safety, claims Varadkar

Planned strike action by nurses in hospital emergency departments next week will compromise patient safety and not resolve overcrowding, Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said.

He urged members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) not to go ahead with planned stoppages “in order to allow time to pause for reflection.”

Nurses are to stage rolling two-hour work stoppages in seven hospital emergency departments on Thursday of next week.

Further rolling strikes in seven other emergency units are scheduled to take place on January 26th.

The decision to go ahead with the strike action followed a vote by INMO members in 26 hospital emergency departments to reject, by a margin of 58 per cent to 42 per cent, proposals which were brokered before Christmas in talks at the Workplace Relations Commission.

The deal involved a series of new incentives to recruit and retain nurses in emergency departments as well as revised internal arrangements for tackling overcrowding in hospitals.

Nurses taking up posts were to be offered a €1,500 education bursary after 12 months.

A relocation package worth a similar amount, announced a number of months, would continue, under the proposals

Controversially the deal contained provision for nurses in emergency units to get two additional leave days in 2016 and 2017 in lieu of meal breaks not taken

Speaking on Wednesday Mr Varadkar said he was disappointed the union rejected the proposals .

“Strike action during the busiest time of the year will not resolve overcrowding, but will compromise patient safety. It took several weeks to negotiate the agreement that has now been rejected and I would ask them not to go ahead with the strike next week in order to allow time to pause for reflection.”

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said on Wednesday that to avoid industrial action, nurses had to be convinced by local management the proposals were a new beginning for emergency departments with a reduction in the number of trolleys and the addressing of staffing deficits.

“Management have got to demonstrate that those measures will be a reality - not proposals, not plans - a reality,” he said.