Cavan General Hospital has cancelled some elective or non-urgent admissions due to a possible shortage of nurses supplied by agencies.
The Health Service Executive said this afternoon that some other hospitals are also considering such a move.
Nursing unions have advised members who work for agencies not to make themselves available for new lower rates of pay which came into effect from today.
At Cork University Maternity Hospital, 14 of the 16 agency midwives due to work at the hospital today have made themselves unavailable for duty.
The HSE said that patient services had not been affected as management had re-deployed staff from other parts of the hospital. It said that some nurse managers had also been called in to discharge duties.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said that the decision to postpone elective admissions at Cavan General had been taken by management as a pre-cautionary measure.
The spokeswoman said that while the action today by agency nurses may have caused inconvenience for some patients, the scale of disruption had been “limited”.
The row stems from moves by the HSE to put in place a new system for securing staff provided by agencies. The HSE says that this will generate up to €40 million in savings. As part of the new arrangements, payments to the nurses provided by the agencies will be reduced significantly in some cases.
Moves were made last week under the aegis of the implementation body for the Croke Park agreement in the health sector to broker a deal on the agency dispute. Further talks will take place later in the week. However, in the interim, the new pay rates came into effect today.
At present, nurses provided by agencies are paid the 10th point on the staff nurse pay scale, regardless of experience.
Under the revised plans, nurses with less than two years’ experience will be paid at the minimum point of the new lower entry scale introduced. Other staff will be paid on the fifth point of the existing scale.
Unions have said that under the HSE plans, agency nurses would also receive reduced payments for working at night, on Sundays and on public holidays
