INEVITABLY, the £80 million price tag on the Labour Court recommendation issued on Friday night to settle the nurses' dispute has attracted most public attention.
However, the court's most significant proposal is that a commission be set up to address issues such as "structural and work changes, segmentation of the grades, training and educational requirements, promotional opportunities and related difficulties and a general assessment of the evolving role of nurses".
Cynics might describe this as garnishing the carrot, but a commission would do far more than iron out anomalies over pay or offer the prospect of further increases in the distant future.
One of the main problems with existing pay and career structures is that they are based on the assumption that all nurses are the same and all nursing jobs are the same. In reality, nurses' duties range from cleaning beds and acting as glorified receptionists to implementing high tech clinical procedures.
They operate at the levels of individual worker, supervisor and general manager. A nurse may be responsible for one patient, a ward or a whole hospital. Under the existing pay structures, a staff nurse at the top of the scale can earn more than £21,000 (including overtime), while a director of nursing responsible for a hospital with a budget of £30 million earns only £28,000.
Unions and managements have connived in perpetuating this system because it is far easier to negotiate for a homogenous block of 26,000 workers than it is to break that block up into all its sectors _ and negotiate on the basis of individual merit.
The commission would address these issues as well as the basic pay offered to staff nurses. But it needs to do so quickly if even the anomalies created by the Labour Court recommendation are to be ironed out.
The court has recommended that the existing offer for the top of the staff nurse salary - £20,350 after 15 years - be increased to £21,000 after 13 years. This significantly reduces the pay differential for ward sisters and nurse managers.
A junior ward sister will now need seven years' service before she is earning more than a staff nurse with 13 years' service; a senior ward sister will need at least six years' service. This will breed resistance to the new deal among the country's 2,500 ward sisters and 350 nurse managers.
Directors of nursing at the State's largest hospitals are being offered between £29,995 and £35,000 under the pay elements of the deal, plus a £2,500 performance bonus. But the vast majority of nurse managers will be on scales ranging from £22,636 to £29,500.
Unlike staff nurses and ward sisters, nurse managers are not eligible for overtime payments, which are worth around £3,000. This will leave many of them earning little more, or even less, than staff reporting to them.
The other big issue is early retirement. The Labour Court has made significant concessions by offering to reduce the age for application from 57 to 55. But the other criterion - at least 35 years' service - eliminates eligibility for most nurses. The doubling of the number of early retirement places from 100 to 200 will also be seen as inadequate.
Like ward sisters, older nurses who accept this deal will have to put their faith in the commission. As one INO representative put it yesterday, "The Labour Court recommendation gives nurses the freedom to achieve freedom".
He thought it appropriate to paraphrase Michael Collins on the 75th anniversary of the Treaty. Did he remember what happened to Michael Collins?