Nurses threaten strike action as Donnelly seeks to quell discontent with extra funds

Nurses are to debate the holding of a national ballot on industrial action, including strike action, on Thursday over the issue of staffing in the sector.

Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said action was needed as nurses could not endure another winter like recent ones as they were “breaking people”. She was speaking in advance of a planned funding announcement by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly which he claimed would do much to address the issue.

The motion calls for a ballot to be held in mid-September on industrial action if substantial progress on the union’s demand for a legal framework to be implemented with regard to safe staffing levels is not made. The union cites the example of class numbers in education where achieving the desired number dictates the budget as the sort of model it ultimately wants to see adopted.

[ Nurses are ‘leaving in droves because this is not what they signed up to do’ ]

Speaking at the opening of the INMO’s annual conference on Wednesday in Killarney, Co Kerry, Ms Ní Sheaghdha said: “The pupil teacher ratios in primary schools… that’s the model that we look to with envy... because the Minister for Finance, when he is introducing the education budget, sets out how much is allocated to maintain the pupil teacher ratio, because that guarantees good education and the correct levels of teachers to pupils in primary schools.

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“In our case we don’t have a system of guarantees, what we have is a budget which is then handed to the HSE and the HSE decide what they use the money for. We’re saying the HSE’s priority must be, by law, making sure that we have safe staffing levels.”

The INMO has recently been balloting on action in a number of individual hospitals where staffing levels were regarded as being a particular concern but the motion to be discussed on Thursday would authorise the executive to initiate action, including strikes, across the entire health service if that was deemed necessary.

On Wednesday it released the results of a survey of more than 2,000 of its members which found that almost three-quarters of nurses had considered leaving their current jobs in the previous month, mostly because of stress or exhaustion.

Almost two-thirds, just short of 66 per cent, said patients are being put at risk “very often or always”, with 85 per cent saying that the number of staff and mix of skills available where they worked did not adequately meet patient needs.

Ahead of his visit to the INMO conference on Friday, Mr Donnelly announced €25 million which, it was said, would fund 854 additional nursing posts and “implement the Framework for Safe Nurse Staffing and Skillmix in all acute hospitals nationally”.

Mr Donnelly said the announcement followed record levels of recruitment into our health service, and said “we will now move to implement this policy in all acute hospitals this year”.

HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster, who will address the INMO delegates on Thursday morning, described the announcement as “a very significant development,” that would “result in a significant improvement in the patient care that we provide, and in the experience of the staff providing that care”.