Next public sector pay deal must address impact of cost-of-living crisis on nurses and midwives, says union head

The next public sector pay deal will have to address the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on nurses and midwives, and provide a mechanism through which they and other workers can have the scale of change they have delivered in recent years recognised, the head of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) told delegates at their annual conference in Killarney.

“We are going to be very clear with the Government parties that we meet: we have a cost-of-living crisis which needs to be addressed. We have an interim payment at the moment which extended the last agreement but we also have money issues that have been neglected,” said the union’s general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha.

“The trade unions and the negotiating team from Ictu, of which I am a member, have also made it clear to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that we have to look at public pay differently. When there is a claim the answer can’t always be that that’s contrary to the public service agreement and so you can’t progress it. What that does is prevent trade unions making cases for members who have expanded their roles, extended their practice and increased the service they provide to the public service.”

She said the roles of nurses and midwives have developed substantially and this needed to be recognised.

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With the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly onstage listening, Ms Ní Sheaghdha said the cost of making hospitals safer should not impact on the pay negotiations as though such investment was “a gift to nurses”. If this happened, she said, “we are going to have a problem, we are going to be in direct conflict”.

“We believe strongly,” she added, “that the value of public service was extremely obvious during the (Covid-19) crisis. And that value has to follow through into the pay negotiations.”

Asked afterwards about pay talks, Mr Donnelly said they were a matter for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. He said, however, that the approval this week of €25 million in funding for additional nurses and safer healthcare would help to address the immediate concerns repeatedly expressed by the INMO regarding the issues of safe workplaces.

He said to address them over the longer term he hopes to announce a doubling of the number of places for student nurses from this September as part of a wider plan to double the number of those qualifying over the coming years. “It hasn’t got full Government sign off yet, but that’s what I’m working towards.”

“The reality is we do not train and educate enough nurses or midwives in this country, nor do we train and educate enough health and social care professionals. We’re very reliant on international healthcare professionals coming here. They are all welcome here and we are really lucky to have them but Ireland has international obligations and one of those obligations is that we are self-sufficient in terms of the future of our healthcare workforce.”

He said he has had extensive talks with the Department of Further and Higher Education, its Minister Simon Harris, and the universities, and he expects the additional places to be available for the start of the next academic year.

A suggestion by the Minister, meanwhile, that the INMO did not always help the cause of recruitment by continually highlighting problems in the system without acknowledging more positive developments, was rejected by INMO president Karan McGowan, who said nurses were not seeking to be “agitators” but “we have a duty to provide a safe level of care and when we can’t do that we will call it out”.