Labour Court seeks to resolve HSE dispute

THE Labour Court will today try to resolve a dispute between the HSE and a number of its staff before it descends into suspensions and service cuts.

For more than three months members of the IMPACT trade union have been refusing to collate and present financial and service data to senior managers.

HSE management says that has resulted in it having “no idea” on how its €14.3bn budget is being spent.

It says the situation simply cannot continue because it could lead to a major overspend which would in turn require service cuts later in the year.

It has been backed by Health Minister Mary Harney who said staff who were not doing their full duties but were collecting their full pay should be suspended before services to patients were affected.

Among other things, the staff concerned want assurances from management that the Croke Park deal on public service pay and reform will not affect the terms of a previous agreement in 2004 which gave them job security.

A meeting was scheduled for tomorrow at which the HSE was due to confirm plans to issue staff with an ultimatum that they had 48 hours to resume full execution of their duties or face suspension. IMPACT said any action against its members would be responded to “in kind”.

However, yesterday afternoon the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions issued a joint statement in which they said they had requested the Labour Court to facilitate an engagement with the parties “as a matter of urgency in order to reach an early agreed resolution of the issues in dispute”.