Strike threat over HSE health-reform strategy

THE IMPACT trade union’s 27,000 health service members have threatened a summer of industrial action unless the Health Service Executive (HSE) changes its health-reform strategy.

At a special conference in Dublin yesterday union delegates warned that it would ballot its members for industrial action within three months if the HSE failed to take a “dramatic new approach” that halted privatisation and involved staff in the implementation of genuine health service reform.

National secretary of the union’s health division, Kevin Callinan, said morale among members of the health service was at “rock bottom” and that nobody expected things to change until there was a change in the HSE’s approach.