NURSES seeking a pay claim had met inflexibility and a lack of imagination, the Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, claimed. There was a reluctance on the part of management to go "the extra mile", she added.

The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, insisted that management had shown a great flexibility, with the original offer of £10 million increased to £20 million.

The nurses had legitimate grievances as individuals and as a profession for over 15 years, as they had said themselves.

He was addressing them as best he could but was constrained by the provisions of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PFW).

"There is not a solution that allows me to pay a special claim to the nurses with any prospect of confining it to them." His trade union contacts indicated that anything negotiated which looked like a special pay increase would be immediately demanded by the other public service unions.

The Programme for National Recovery (which preceded the PCW) had contained a more rigid and inflexible public service pay policy, said Mrs Geoghegan Quinn.

Despite that, and a sensitive fiscal policy at the time, the then government was capable of successfully negotiating several disputes with imagination, flexibility and productivity.

It should be possible to give the nurses what they deserved within the PCW.

She asked how it was possible for the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, to negotiate a deal with the teachers within the PCW, if it was not possible for the Minister for Health to do the same for nurses.

It was possible, said Mr Noonan, to negotiate the dispute within the parameters of the PCW. While he agreed there was some flexibility within the PCW, it gave little "elbow room".

He said a question should be tabled to the Minister for Education on the deal negotiated with the teachers. These had been going on for almost 18 months so the solutions had not been arrived at easily.

He understood they were not yet concluded.