Health service dispute - Settlement hopes offer Ahern lifeline

A GLIMMER of light has finally appeared in the deadlocked row between nurses, health service employers and the Government over nursing pay and conditions, effectively raising hopes that a settlement could be in sight just as the dispute was about to escalate.

Politically speaking, if positive results were to emerge from the tentative steps initiated yesterday by the National Implementation Body (NIB) it would be a significant plus for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who is poised to announce the date of the forthcoming General Election.

It may be too early to describe this development as a major breakthrough. But the fact that both sides of the dispute including leaders of the nursing unions and managers of the Health Service Executive (HSE) yesterday held separate talks with the NIB, it will be greeted with a sigh of relief by hospital patients, their worried families and long suffering members of the public who have to endure the glaring deficiencies of a health service in crisis.

While these exploratory contacts can at best be described as “talks about talks”, the timing was important because tomorrow and Friday, members of the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association were preparing to escalate their rolling series of one-hour work stoppages to 50 hospitals across the country.

In a significant move, they had indicated a willingness to suspend the stoppages if talks got underway. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that nurses were willing to enter informal talks without laying down any pre-conditions.

The NIB was set up by Government to maintain peace and stability on the industrial relations front and has been involved in helping to resolve a number of disputes. When the body first intervened in the nursing dispute three weeks ago, it failed to hammer out a deal between the two sides. Since then it has kept the situation under close surveillance but up to now has ruled out becoming directly involved in talks because it felt the right ingredients for a possible settlement were not in place.

While the INO has done the right thing by going into talks without conditions, nurses can be expected to press their demands for a 35-hour week.

Arguably, if the exploratory talks are to mean anything, the nursing unions should be willing to go a step further by suspending all industrial actions, including their ongoing work-to-rule.

At least that would create a climate in which progress could be made on the duration of the working week as opposed to the vexed issue of a 10% pay demand which has been rejected by the Government on grounds that it cannot be dealt with outside the bench marking process.

Whatever about consultants, the public is sympathetic towards nurses. With an election looming, the last thing the Coalition wants is nurses picketing hospitals.