A programme devised to allow a small number of paediatric nurses to get specialist training in London to address skills shortages in the health service has become the latest victim of the Health Service Executive's (HSE) cost-cutting plan.
Four nurses were due to begin neo-natal and intensive-care training at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London on October 4th, but they will not now be able to travel because their hospitals will be unable to replace them due to the HSE's recruitment ban.
Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO), said that it had taken years to get the programme up and running and for it to be upended now was "crazy".
The programme was set up after the death of two-year-old Róisín Ruddle within hours of her scheduled heart operation being postponed by Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin. The operation was postponed due to a shortage of intensive-care nurses to look after her following surgery.
"Because of the cutbacks circular, the staff going over are not being replaced, so they can't go," Mr Doran said. "They can't go because they come from an area already short-staffed."
He explained that the nurses - from hospitals in Cork, Dublin and Drogheda - had been scheduled to do the course this year.
While the HSE is due to review its recruitment ban on October 1st - which could mean that the nurses could still go to London - Mr Doran said that following a meeting with management in the past week unions had been led to understand that the HSE intended to leave the ban in place until the end of the year. "That is not acceptable," he said.
Hospital cutbacks, which are being made by the HSE to try to reduce its financial deficit of €245 million (as of the end of July), are set to dominate the INO's annual conference in Killarney, which began in closed session yesterday and continues in open session today and tomorrow. Minister for Health Mary Harney is due to address delegates tomorrow.
Delegates will be given an update today on their claims for increased pay under benchmarking and a shorter working week. The benchmarking body is due to report later in the year.
Discussions are to begin at local hospital level over the next few days on the agreement reached earlier this year to reduce nurses' hours to 37.5 from 39 by June next year.
It is understood that the Cabinet yesterday discussed the establishment of a commission which would look at ways to reduce the nurses' working week to 35 hours.