HSE ordered to pay senior nurses up to €200,000

THE Rights Commissioner has ordered the HSE to pay up to €200,000 to senior nurses from whom it withheld performance-related pay which was due to them two years ago.

According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, and the Psychiatric Nurses Association, which brought the case before the commissioners, 28 directors of nursing (band 1), directors of mental health and directors of public health nursing should have received the payments in 2008.

They claimed the withholding of the payments constituted an illegal deduction under the Payment of Wages Act 1991.