The leaders of two of the State's nursing unions have warned the Government there could be a national strike by "midsummer" if next week's pay talks at the Labour Court fail. They blamed existing pay rates for the failure of the health services to attract enough recruits to fill vacancies in hospitals and training courses.
The general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses' Association of Ireland, Mr Des Kavanagh, told the union's annual conference in Bantry, Co Cork, yesterday, that management representatives on the Nursing Commission had "frustrated all attempts to address the financial issues" during its 18 months of deliberation.
"From the beginning the long arm of the Departments of Health and Finance reached into the commission to ensure issues of money and leave were referred back to the (Labour) court," he said. Direct talks since had been "doomed to failure by the attitude of the employers".
Even within the limited pay increases on offer, management had attempted to discriminate against psychiatric nurses. He warned that "there is no way this union can accept the downgrading" of supervisory and management grades within the psychiatric nursing profession.
"We will ask the court to reject the poisonous principles of discrimination upon which management's offer is based." He said the court had to produce a recommendation "which will at last lead nurses and nursing into its proper position in the hierarchy of public service pay. The recommendation will then be balloted on by the membership. Rejection will mean a national nursing strike in midsummer".
Mr Kavanagh warned that, even if the aspirations of other nursing groups were met, his members would reject any offer that discriminated against them on pay.
In a submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, the general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, Mr Liam Doran, said low pay was the biggest single factor inhibiting recruitment. "The latest statistics indicate that within one decade we have gone from traditionally having an oversupply of qualified and highly skilled nurses, which we exported throughout the world, to having to import nurses from abroad. " Despite aggressive recruitment campaigns, over 800 permanent nursing posts remain unfilled."
Calls were made at the PNAI conference in Bantry yesterday for guaranteed compensation to be paid to psychiatric nurses injured in their work. Conference said the new Mental Health Act must also provide full legal protection for psychiatric nurses engaged in forcible committals of patients.