Nurses must be paid millions of euro in back-pay
Thousands of nurses who provided temporary cover for senior staff such as matrons, ward sisters or their deputies are entitled to compensation of up to €3,000. Retired nurses who were not properly paid for similar cover could net more than twice that amount in pension and lump sum adjustments following a ruling by Rights Commissioner Tony Bregazzi. In a two-page judgment in the case taken by retired assistant chief nursing officer in Wexford, Eddie Kelly, Mr Bregazzi found the real difference between nurses' salary and that of the person for whom they were providing cover was not taken into consideration when calculating payment for taking on that extra responsibility.
He said nurses who replaced such staff should be compensated at a flat rate of €600 per year, up to a maximum of five years bringing their claim to €3,000. Arrears over and above the sum of €3,000 should be paid to nurses who lost out in retirement and pension benefits because of the error in the calculation of premium payments, he added. The Southern Health Board is the only board exempt from the ruling. Mr Kelly said the judgment marks a happy end to a case he first initiated in the 1970s. When he retired three years ago, he appealed further to the Department of the Environment. "This judgment confirms that I and others have been short-changed for work we had been doing for years.
