Interview with Bertie Ahern: Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny's offer to appoint an intermediary to solve the nurses' dispute showed that he did not understand the State's industrial relations rules, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said.
In an attack on Mr Kenny's experience, Mr Ahern said that his proposal would scupper the Towards 2016 social partnership. "I would have to ask one question. Is Enda Kenny saying that we should break the agreement signed in February? I don't think he can say that and not answer that question."
Speaking during a brief visit to Garryowen Rugby Club in Limerick, Mr Ahern said: "If we followed what Enda Kenny [ suggests] and break 2016 you can take it that you would not be out of the door of the negotiating room before every other public and private sector worker would be in looking for a 35-hour week."
The National Implementation Board (NIB), headed by Dermot McCarthy, and the Labour Court had worked for weeks to end the dispute. "It is an extraordinary thing to say that an intermediary could do a better job than both the NIB and the Labour Court . . . Anyone who knows anything about industrial relations would not say that," Mr Ahern told The Irish Times.
Insisting that he did not want a confrontation with the nurses, Mr Ahern said that their demand for a 35-hour week had to be achieved without cost, or nearly without cost. A detailed examination had to be carried out . . . The Government was prepared to accept, and pay for, an independent international assessment. The Health Service Executive and the Department of Health and Children did not see how they could move to a 35-hour week. "They are not even sure whether they will ever be able to do it," he said. "It needs to be assessed. It will not be done by the Labour Court or the NIB. I am prepared to give a fixed time for the assessment to be finished."
When it was put to Mr Ahern in an RTÉ radio interview yesterday that the nurses' dispute could cost him votes, the Taoiseach said: "You know I hope it doesn't. I mean it could, obviously. If I could solve the nurses' dispute - and I've solved lots of disputes in my day - in some simple way, I would do it. But unfortunately there's not a simple way."