Nurses may not strike even if pay deal rejected

REJECTION of the Croke Park pay deal does not mean nurses will go on strike, the general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said yesterday.

Speaking on the first of a three-day annual delegate conference in Trim, Co Meath, Liam Doran said balloting on the deal – designed to restore public finances but under which the ban on public service recruitment will continue indefinitely – will begin next week and will take three weeks to complete.

The INMO executive is recommending rejection of the deal and this morning will publish its Alternative Agenda for Change, a series of alternative proposals for health service savings.

Opposition to the deal and anger over the Health Service Executive (HSE) recruitment moratorium are set to dominate the conference.

According to the union, not one of the nurses’ class of 2009 – 1,600 graduates – was offered a job in the Irish health service because of the hiring ban introduced in September 2007; in addition, 1,900 nursing and midwifery posts have been lost.

INMO president Sheila Dickson said the cutbacks were “having a disastrous impact on patient care”.

Ms Dickson said one of the motions for conference is the withholding of the retention fee of €85 from An Bord Altranais.

“This is due to the board’s failure to support the professions by issuing clear directives to nurses and midwives who are having their professional judgement, with regard to safe practice and safe care, ignored by their employers leaving their own position compromised,” Ms Dickson said.

More than 320 nurses and midwives have gathered for the conference where they will hear that 1,064 beds have been closed (the equivalent of closing St James’s Hospital in Dublin) and that under the Croke Park proposals another 6,000 frontline posts will be lost over the next three years, as well as 3,500 acute hospital beds. During the same period 4,800 nurses and midwives will graduate and there is little likelihood any of them being able to secure a post in Ireland, the INMO said.

Yesterday a statement from Beaumont Hospital confirmed it intends to close 33 beds at the end of this week and a further in approximately two weeks time.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said the conference “is taking place against a background of the most severe cutbacks and curtailments in staffing and services that the public health service has ever faced”.