Nurses vote to reject Croke Park deal

The country’s nurses backed two teaching unions in rejecting the Croke Park pay deal today.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), which had been expected to oppose the public sector plan, voted four-to-one to throw out the proposals.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said it was the latest illustration of nurses and midwives speaking out, and speaking up, for their patients.

“Just as banks are of systemic importance to our economy, a properly functioning and resourced public health service is of systemic importance to the people of Ireland and to the patients that it is there to serve,” he said.

Mr Doran said the Croke Park deal included plans to cut 6,000 health service posts and close another 3,500 beds.

He said it was “totally unacceptable, harmful and, notwithstanding our current economic situation, totally unjustifiable”.

The INMO said the vote was not a call for industrial action. It announced the end of a work-to-rule and offered to go straight into talks with the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) on alternative reform.

The union, with more than 40,000 members, joins the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (Asti) and the Teachers Union of Ireland – a total of more than 72,000 workers – in fighting the agreement.

The INMO final ballot registered 84% against the deal, after almost-two thirds of members voted.

Craft workers from the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) and lower-paid public servants with the Civil Public and Services Union have also refused to back the deal.

The country’s largest teaching union the INTO has supported the Croke Park deal.

It was negotiated by senior trade union figures and Government trouble-shooters under intense pressure at GAA headquarters two months ago and set out plans to freeze pay until 2014.

In return, unions are obliged to co-operate with a range of cost-saving measures to reform the public sector.

The Public Service Executive Union and the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, representing mid and high-ranking employees, also voted to support the package.

The Medical Laboratory Scientists Association, which has 1,800 members in the public sector and is an affiliate of SIPTU, has voted in favour of the deal.