Industrial action will not get a single patient off a trolley, said Health Minister Leo Varadkar yesterday.

An INMO senior executive has warned that the HSE’s new nursing recruitment drive could face problems if a staffing crisis and backlog of applications can’t be cleared.

Members of the public are being asked to join with nurses for tomorrows lunchtime protest outside the Dáil.

The solution to the current A&E crisis lies not just in emergency departments but throughout the provision of health services, writes Dave Hughes

The INMO says Leo Varadkar faces a difficult job as Minister for Health.

Young nurses whose two-year contracts come to an end may be forced to accept a de facto 15% pay cut if they want “to continue in employment”.

Irish workers are not paying their fair share of the debt — they’ve been lumped with the lot, as banks, politiciansand others remain untouched, writes Dave Hughes

Irate nurses have threatened to walk off wards and head “straight to the gate” if the Government imposes further pay cuts.

Ireland’s largest nursing union has denied its early departure from the Croke Park II talks left young nurses “high and dry” because it did not avail of concessions which have now been afforded to new teachers.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has claimed frontline public servants earning €35,000 will lose 8% of their pay as a result of the Croke Park II proposals — but no other public servants earning less than €80,000 will lose nearly as much.

The Health Service Executive has fallen spectacularly short of its target of cutting agency staff costs by 50% this year, as the actual spend is set to top the €219m spent in 2011.

Nurses have reacted angrily to reports that management in the health service want to impose widespread work changes to cope with early retirements and cutbacks.

ALMOST 1,900 hospital beds have closed over the past 18 months due to staff cuts and an ongoing lack of investment in services.

A MORTGAGE strike which has been proposed by trade union officials would hurt members more than the banks.

DELEGATES at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial conference have backed calls for a “mortgage strike” by at least 100,000 people unless mortgages on primary residences are reduced to reflect current value.

THE decision by Michael Noonan, Minister for Finance, to allow pension companies pass on the 0.6% jobs tax to their customers, whether contributors or beneficiaries, was a direct contradiction of the views he had expressed in the Dáil debate and a capitulation to Industry pressure.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation wants new laws brought in to ensure that companies which look after some of its members pensions do not pass on the newly introduced levy.

THE head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has admitted the ban on staff recruitment is creating difficulties across the health service.

A CAMPAIGN of civil disobedience culminating in a mortgage strike has been mooted by the country’s largest nursing union as a means of forcing banks to write down the mortgages of householders in negative equity.

THE Government has relented on its decision to totally abolish payments to student nurses.

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) spent almost €45 million hiring agency staff to fill vacancies in the first five months of last year, more than three years into its ban on filling permanent posts.

THE union representing senior civil and public servants yesterday voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform.

THE Croke Park agreement looks almost certain to be ratified after the leadership of the country’s largest solely public service union gave it its backing.

THE number of patients treated on hospital trolleys yesterday was 500, which exceeds a level once referred to by Health Minister Mary Harney as a national emergency.

A record 500 patients were treated on trolleys in hospitals today – higher than the 2006 beds crisis which Health Minister Mary Harney branded “a national emergency”.

Shoppers from Mongolia to Lebanon can now get Marks & Spencer underwear delivered to their door after the retailer today announced it was increasing its international reach.

THE Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) yesterday pointed out that the number of people on trolleys around the country in June was almost 30% higher than in the same month last year.

RTÉ and HIQA, the health service watchdog, both came under attack at the Irish Nurses’ Organisation’s delegate conference.

NURSES at Portiuncula Hospital in Co Galway began industrial action yesterday over what they claim is the wrongful suspension of two long-serving senior nurse managers.

NURSES have accused the Health Service Executive (HSE) of reneging on work commitments for the state’s graduate nurses.

MORE than half of all new entrants to the Irish nursing register are foreigners, it was claimed yesterday.

PREGNANT nurses who are increasingly taking extended sick leave prior to commencing maternity leave are doing so at a huge cost to the health service, according to a Health Service Executive (HSE) human resources chief.

NURSES said yesterday they would give the Labour Court a last chance to deal with their pay claim before they considered the “nuclear option” of industrial action.

Tens of thousands of nurses may cripple the health service through mass resignations unless they are given a pay rise, it emerged today.

A LABOUR Court ruling has found the Health Service Executive (HSE) guilty of indirectly discriminating against women by paying female nurse managers less than men doing jobs of equal value.

THE Labour Court has told the Health Service Executive it is not entitled to claim back overpayments made to more than 100 nurses through the controversial Personal Payroll and Related Systems (PPARS).

A PATIENTS’ support group has accused Health Minister Mary Harney of hiding behind the Health Service Executive in a bid to avoid the fall out of the authority’s cost saving measures.

THE Health Service Executive’s (HSE) decision to close the orthopaedic department at Our Lady’s Hospital in Co Meath, during December as part of their “break-even” plan will result in taxpayers paying more for patients to be treated in private hospitals, nurses warned yesterday.

The State is to pay €2m to 100 nurses whose work experience overseas was not taken into account when they took up positions in Ireland.

NURSING organisations have reacted angrily after the discovery that student nurses are included in the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) threat to dock the pay of participants in the work-to-rule crisis.

THE Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has said nurses will return to work stoppages after the weekend if the Health Service Executive does not make it a satisfactory offer at 3pm this afternoon.

STRIKE action by up to 40,000 nurses could potentially cripple the health service from next week.

TRADE unions representing nurses and orderlies in the psychiatric health sector are to ballot their members on industrial action following the collapse of talks with employers on a compensation scheme for workers assaulted by patients.

Nurses today called for radical reform of the health service, putting patients first by paying those who care for them what they are worth.