The Irish Nurses' Organisation is planning to hold over 70 consultative and information meetings with its members during the next fortnight to discuss the contents of the Labour Court recommendations on nurses' pay. The recommendation is due out today.
The general secretary of the INO, Mr Liam Doran, says it will be the most extensive consultative process carried out by the union with its 25,000 members.
The chairman of the Labour Court, Mr Finbarr Flood, is expected to make copies of the court's recommendations available to the nursing unions and Health Service Employers' Agency this afternoon.
The four nursing unions will meet this afternoon to examine the recommendations and then hold separate meetings of their executives. They will resume joint discussions tomorrow afternoon.
Meanwhile, the nursing unions and the HSEA have agreed new overtime rates, which should see at least £5 million extra being spent in wages. Most of this will go to staff nurses in major acute hospitals, where staffing levels and industrial relations problems have been particularly fraught.
The main concern of today's Labour Court recommendations is expected to be with the supervisory and management grades. The cost of conceding all the union claims has been put as high as £203 million.
The chief executive of the HSEA, Mr Gerard Barry, said the publication of the recommendations hopefully would enable the unions and management to finalise negotiations on nurses' pay. This would enable both sides to consider the wider implications of the Commission on Nursing report for the profession and the health services.
He pointed out that only three recommendations of the commission relate to pay, while there are 197 on other issues.
Some £25 million in capital investment has been earmarked by the Government to implement the commission's non-pay recommendations.