"I COULD have got more votes for the acceptance of a cut than for this deal, says one very experienced trade union official after hearing of the massive eight to one rejection of the nurses' restructuring package under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work."

If we had God sitting at our right hand recommending it, it would still have gone down," says another.

And yet, far from being dispirited, nursing union leaders have accepted and even welcomed the result. The biggest margin of rejection was in the largest union, the Irish Nurses Organisation, where 90 per cent of the members said No.

Its general secretary, Mr P.J. Madden, says "The INO has a tradition of conservatism. We expected that would prevail and there would be a narrow majority for the deal.

"We underestimated ourselves and the Department of Health and the Minister underestimated the degree of anger among nurses," he says.

He had never seen nurses turn up in such numbers at meetings, some of which were held at 7.30 a.m. or late at night to accommodate members' working hours.

The only nursing union leadership to actually recommend rejection of the deal was that of the smallest, the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland. The union has 3,000 members and has traditionally been the most militant. Its general secretary, Mr Des Kavanagh, says he believes the result of the ballot "is a very positive development".

Nurses had "sought pay reviews in years past and settled for less than they might have, because of a lack of militancy. It's there now and we need to welcome it.

"Our members are saying to the Government that nurses are sick and tired of being underpaid and undervalued."

"We've been saying for a long time that there has been a major shift in the mood of nurses in Ireland," says Mr Noel Dowling of SIPTU, which represents both psychiatric and general nurses. "The days when the profession was dominated by the notion that it was a vocation are gone, and nurses are now demanding their fair share of the national cake.

"It's fair to say the mood has shifted further than we ourselves realised." He defends putting the proposals agreed in three weeks of (intensive negotiations as "the best deal we could get across short of a strike".

And it now looks as if a strike is inevitable, even though industrial action would be a major and possibly fatal breach of the PCW. That does not seem to faze the unions. They say the PCW is a voluntary agreement, and their first duty is to represent their members and do their best to achieve what they want.

AS the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, said yesterday, one of the great obstacles in finding a solution to the dispute this side of a strike is that nobody can "put their finger" on two or three issues which, if addressed, might may change their mind.

The fist of defects cited by nurses (themselves is long and even if the Minister had another £100 million to throw at the problem, it might not be enough. Regardless, the Minister has reiterated that there is no more money in the kitty.

The leader of IMPACT, the fourth union in the Nursing Alliance, Mr Peter McLoone, agrees there are no simple solutions to be reached by simply throwing more money at the problem. He believes there is a need to look again at the issues and even wonders if the approach to negotiations by both sides has been fundamentally flawed.

He has taken a more reflective view of the ballot results than his colleagues. This is in part because he is the newly elected chairman of the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. As such, he has responsibility for much wider groups of workers and how a breakdown of the PCW could affect them.

"We have to go back to people as leaders and say that rejection of this magnitude is not sufficient in itself to deliver the message you want to deliver," he says. "We need to analyse the issues and find out what people want."

He believes it may be necessary to enter separate negotiations for different categories of nurse there are more than 20.

Mr McLonne accepts a settlement this side of a strike will be difficult to achieve. But he also warns that, if there is a strike, "negotiating a return to work formula will be very different from negotiating the settlement of a complex pay issue. The danger in forcing a solution is that it could leave disillusioned groups in its wake and sow the seeds of discontent for years to come".

THE problem of finding the correct issues to address is not, of course, confined to unions. They say management's dilatoriness in producing restructuring plans was a major contribution in fuelling members' impatience.

Naturally, the Local Government Staff Negotiations Board rejects this. The chief management negotiator, Mr Gerard Barry, accepts there were delays because both sides were entering uncharted territory" in trying to cut a deal on restructuring. "But we were able to prioritise our agenda a lot sooner than the unions".

While disappointed with the outcome of the ballot, he says his side is still available for talks. So are the unions. Between now and the strike ballot at the end of the month a lot of talking will be done.