Has the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, a very short memory, or is he being deliberately provocative or procrastinating when he proposes that the monetary recommendations in the report of the Commission on Nursing should be discussed with the Public Service Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and addressed "in the context of public service pay policy generally"? The Commission, under the independent chairmanship of Miss Justice Mella Carroll, has reported with commendable speed and thoroughness and has itself recommended that outstanding pay issues "should be referred to the Labour Court for argument and determination as a matter of urgency". This recommendation is sound and logical, given the origins of the Commission itself and its terms of reference.
It was widely recognised last February, when the nation was on the edge of its first nursing strike in history, that the nurses' case was unique and that the needs of the nursing profession had to be acknowledged and recognised outside the general framework and relativities of public service pay and the national wage agreements. The Commission was set up to give the profession new structures and career paths that would recognise the enormous changes that had taken place in nursing in terms of training, skills and responsibilities over the previous quarter century. And Mr Cowen, to his credit, has said that he will act immediately on six of the Commission's main recommendations. But to try to bury the pay recommendations back into the current public service pay structures is to act contrary to the purpose and substance of the Commission's work in the first place.
Either the work and responsibilities of the nursing have changed (and the Commission's substantive recommendations on the restructuring of the profession would indicate beyond doubt that they have), or the Government is not prepared to accept that fact. Mr Cowen cannot have it both ways by seeming to implement the structural change recommendations yet firing the pay recommendations out. In Irish society, no less than in most others, the value of a person's worth at work is perceived in terms of that person's remuneration. The low worth of the nursing profession, as measured in its current remuneration and as perceived by those who might otherwise enter it, has already led to a decline in recruitment and a shortage of nurses in many hospitals and other health services.
The Carroll Commission has produced one of the most important and relevant reports in the history of the nursing profession in this State. The present Government, many of whose members were vociferous in their support of the nurses' case leading up to last February's crisis, should accept all of it or none of it. To accept all of it will just about do justice to a profession that has given more than most others to Irish society with little complaint (until earlier this year, of course) and much dedication. To accept none of it will virtually close down the Irish health services in bitter and unwarranted confrontation. To try to accept some of it and side-line or alter other of its recommendations will prove either disingenuous or devious and ultimately unacceptable.