THE result of the nurses' ballot is expected to be a narrow majority in favour of the Labour Court recommendation on their long-running dispute.
Counting of votes is due to finish today and the result from the main union, the Irish Nurses Organisation, will be announced at 3 p.m.
The decisive factors favouring acceptance appear to be the substantial increases in pay for staff nurses and the promise of a commission to review long-standing grievances.
The bulk of the money available in the £87 million package is targeted at staff nurses, who comprise 17,000 of the 27,000 nurses in the public health services. They are being offered increases ranging from 6.6 to 17.9 per cent.
While there is some unhappiness among ward sisters and management grades over erosion of the pay differentials between them and staff nurses, many of them seem willing to vote for the proposals on the basis that this issue will be given priority by the new commission.
The Government has given an unconditional commitment to implement the findings of the commission. The commission will not adjudicate directly on pay; any recommendations with pay implications would be referred back to the industrial relations process.
However, the unions would have a strong moral argument in their favour and the right of appeal to the Labour Court. Negotiations on pay would not appear to be tightly bound by the framework of Partnership 2000.
If the nurses reject the Labour Court recommendation, there is no safety net to avert a national strike next Monday. While health managers have contingency plans, it is accepted that the level of disruption to services next week would be even greater than that anticipated if the strike had gone ahead on February 10th.
Confidence appears to be growing within the four unions in the Nursing Alliance that the strike will be averted. They all refrained from official comment last night.
The most problematic area has been Dublin, where the previous £50 million offer was strongly rejected.
The city has six major acute hospitals, which have a high level of younger nurses and temporary staff. Nurses in these hospitals have also been exposed to the greatest degree of organisational and technical change.
It appears that nurses at most of the Dublin hospitals will accept the Labour Court recommendation. A possible exception is the Mater, where there continues to be strong criticism of the terms.