The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, has been accused of scaremongering by the nursing unions for claiming that their failure to accept management criteria on emergency cover would put patients' lives at risk. Today the Nursing Alliance is to meet in Dublin and set its own guidelines.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association in Tullamore, Co Offaly, on Saturday, Mr Cowen said the threatened strike would not only undermine social partnership but inflict hardship on patients and clients of the health service. The Minister warned that he did not intend to accept any agreement on emergency cover which did not guarantee the safety of all patients. He also said that conceding more money to nurses could ultimately lead to cutbacks in the health service.
Responding yesterday, the chairman of the Nursing Alliance, Mr Liam Doran, said that beds were already being closed in hospitals because of a shortage of nurses. "Paying nurses too much is not closing hospitals and beds, but paying nurses too little is closing them."
On the issue of emergency cover he said that, if a strike took place, "patients' needs will be prioritised by nurses, in association with doctors, as happens in our hospitals every day of the week." The text of guidelines for the strike committees would be going out to them after being finalised by the alliance at today's meeting.
On Saturday Mr Cowen reiterated his warning to the State's 28,000 nurses that the Government would not back down in the face of strike action. The reality was that nurses' pay could not be dealt with in isolation from other public service groups, he told the IHCA.
Mr Cowen asked all nurses to reflect and consider the full implications of voting for strike action. Their ballot concludes at the end of the week.
Hospital consultants attending the conference passed an emergency motion expressing "extreme concern at the prospect of major industrial unrest, which will seriously disrupt patient care in all hospitals".
The IHCA president, Dr Joan Daly, said: "We all work with nurses every day in our hospitals. Nurses are highly skilled and dedicated to their vocation. They are, without doubt, undervalued by their employers and this is reflected in their pay and career structure."
The association estimates that over 3,000 elective admissions per week will be cancelled and that up to 7,000 out-patient appointments will have to be cancelled. "This will represent an enormous disruption of services, and patient care will suffer," she said.
However, the IHCA has warned that it cannot accept that emergency patients should be subjected to any reduction in services or standards of patient care.
A Dublin consultant pathologist, Dr Peter Kelly, said the fate of patients who came to hospitals in an emergency situation during the course of a strike was a major concern. The responsibility to admit patients must continue to rest with doctors.