Nurses set to agree on national pay rally call

AN emergency motion calling for a national pay rally for nurses to vent their anger at low pay and long working hours is expected to be carried unanimously at the Irish Nurses Organisation AGM today.

The motion, tabled last night, endorses the eight-point pay claim that both the INO and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) are pursuing outside of the benchmarking process.

At the top of the unions’ agenda is an “anomaly” which sees qualified and unqualified childcare workers paid €2,000 more than staff nurses and midwives at every point of their respective salary scales. In the case of childcare workers, both qualified and unqualified, nurses who supervise them have to spend 21 years in the profession before they are paid more than the people they supervise.

Among the other seven claims being pursued by the two unions include a reduction in the working week from 39 hours to 35 and the introduction of a Dublin “weighting allowance”.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has estimated the cost of the claims — including “knock-on implications” as other workers seek to catch up with any awards made to the nurses — would be €1.67 billion.

Yesterday, Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney said she had no intention of conceding to INO demands for a Dublin weighting allowance on the grounds that other public service workers, such as teachers and gardaí, would seek the same entitlement.

However INO general secretary Liam Doran said nurses were a special case.

“The major Dublin teaching hospitals produced a report which said they needed an allowance to retain nurses. There is a proven shortage, highlighted by maternity hospitals having to recruit general nurses because they can’t get enough maternity staff. This is clearly unsustainable going forward.”

Mr Doran also dismissed Ms Harney’s claim that she would have attended this year’s conference if the INO had given her a date other than Friday, when she is due to travel to a symposium in the US. Ms Harney’s failure to attend has come in for major criticism from both unions.

“We issued an invitation to the minister on January 18, but we were only told four weeks ago that she would not be attending. The department knows that on previous years we have rearranged our schedule to accommodate the minister’s attendance. Yet no effort was made by the department of the Tánaiste’s office to look for another date.”