Nurses protest graduate plan

Nurses are preparing to take a stand this weekend to protest against Government plans to undercut existing pay scales with new graduate placements.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) confirmed they will both boycott the proposal, introduced by Health Minister James Reilly last month.

Their opposition will be spelled out at Saturday’s rally which will take place in Croke Park at 11am.

The unions claim Mr Reilly’s plan to hire 1,000 trainee nurses for less than the going rate for nursing staff is an attempt to introduce “cheap labour under the superficial guise of an educational graduate programme”.

According to a joint statement from the unions, the work the graduate nurses will be expected to do will not be at a trainee grade.

Instead, they claim, the nurses will have to fulfil the duty of staff while getting paid 80% of the wage.

The rally is intended to attract recent graduates, agency staff, and temporary workers.

Mr Reilly said the scheme would create positions for newly qualified nurses who have been leaving the country and would reduce the HSE’s dependency on agency staff and overtime.

However, PNA general secretary Des Kavanagh said the scheme was being introduced on false pretences.

“The HSE are presenting this flawed initiative as some sort of opportunity for new graduates. All it is, in reality, is an overt attempt to recruit cheap labour in breach of agreed salaries,” he said.

His INMO counterpart, Liam Doran, said there were no new jobs being created under the scheme and it was merely replacing existing workers with lower paid graduates.

The move was also opposed by Siptu.