Nurses and orderlies to vote on industrial action

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.

The talks between the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (PNA), SIPTU and, on the other side, representatives from the Departments of Health and Finance and the Health Service Executive (HSE), had been brokered by the Labour Relations Commission in a agreement reached on May 24 last.

Yesterday, the Department of Health was expected to lay out before the PNA, which represents 6,500 nurses, and SIPTU its proposals for a compensation scheme.

According to PNA general secretary Des Kavanagh, “they had nothing to offer and left us with no choice but to ballot our members on industrial action”.

The compensation claim has been on the table for over three years, he said, adding that what took place yesterday was in contravention of the agreement and contrary to agreed procedure.

Nearly three in every 100 psychiatric nurses spent more than three days off sick last year due to assault and 859 nurses were assaulted in one year alone.

When the PNA negotiated an indemnity scheme in 1993 it was, Mr Kavanagh said, a minimalist gesture in the face of public concern surrounding the stabbing of three colleagues in Artane.

The union is arguing that the existing scheme falls short of what nurses have demanded as just compensation. It is threatening widespread action unless both psychological and physical injury are covered by the no fault compensation scheme, as recommended by a 2003 Department of Health task force report.

When setting up the task force in 2002, then Minister for Health Micheál Martin had said he would “implement the recommendations of the task force within an agreed time-frame”, but in July 2005 the Government informed the union it had changed its mind.

A report by the PNA last month revealed that psychiatric nurses experienced 47% more assaults in 2005 than 2001.

Nurses reported being stabbed, bitten, head-butted, groped and kicked.

Dave Hughes, the general secretary of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, said that while a special committee was looking at ways to protect staff, assaults by nursing staff on patients were an “extremely rare” occurrence and had probably “almost never” occurred.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said they were due to meet with the PNA next Thursday to give them the most up-to-date position on the fixed redress scheme. It’s understood there are concerns within the department that a more open-ended compensation scheme could lead to similar claims from other public servants and cost the Exchequer millions.