HEALTH workers have refused to exclude residential homes for children at risk and for the mentally handicapped from their strike.
Management requested that these homes be excluded after the strike started this week. Yesterday, however, the health division executive of IMPACT met and declined the request.
Mr Bernard Harbor said the union had consulted its members in the area and they were not in favour. They were working a full 39-hour week in the homes, providing emergency daytime cover, without pay.
Night working is not part of the childcare workers' normal duties and is undertaken only for an allowance of £15 per night. This, he said, has been a contentious issue for many years.
The view of the health division executive was that emergency cover was decided between the union and management before the strike. The issue of night cover at residential children's homes became an issue only after the strike started.
"Under these circumstances it is unreasonable of management to expect a concession," said a statement.
The Eastern Health Board branch of IMPACT is to escalate the dispute by placing pickets on health board premises in Dublin, including the community care headquarters in Lord Edward Street.
The dispute was raised on the Order of Business in the Dail. The Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, claimed that there was "rampant chaos". Ms Liz O'Donnell said stroke victims and other helpless and vulnerable patients were facing a second week without vital services.
The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, denied that there was chaos and said the Government was seeking an end to the dispute.
The chairman of IMPACT's social worker branch, Mr Francis Chance, rejected a claim by the editor of the Irish Social Worker, Mr Kieran McGrath, that sex abuse cases were being excluded from emergency cover.
Mr Chance said a service would be provided in the case of impending death or personal injury to a child or young person. "Quite obviously social workers would consider sexual, abuse as a gross form of injury.