Strike disrupts patient care

THE first of a series of strikes disrupted the care of psychiatric and elderly patients at six Dublin hospitals yesterday.

More than 200 hospital ward attendants held a 24-hour work stoppage in a protest over pay.

Members of SIPTU want pay parity with colleagues in acute hospitals in the Dublin area. SIPTU health service official Ramon O’Reilly said there was an 8% gap in pay between them.

Health employers said the action was unjustified as a benchmarking process was in place to sort out the problem.

Nurses and hospital managers filled in for the absent ward attendants during the stoppage.

With no signs of conciliatory talks, Mr O’Reilly said a series of rolling industrial actions would include a two-day protest next week. He called on the employers to recognise the injustice they were perpetrating on staff and to enter discussions before the dispute escalated next week. The attendants have continued to provide emergency services, including the provision of oxygen as well as other duties.

Psychiatric Nurses Association industrial relations officer, Seamus Murphy, said psychiatric nurses were already working under intolerable difficulties because of under-staffing.

“We believe that discussions should take place as quickly as possible to ensure the dispute doesn’t enter another phase next week,” he said.

Fine Gael health spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said the hardship caused by the strike was another example of Health Minister Micheál Martin’s incompetence.

“It is completely unacceptable that the care of long-term patients in publicly run hospitals should somehow be regarded as less valuable or less worthy than those in the acute voluntary hospitals,” she said.