Solving A&E crisis will cost more money - Nurses’ strike averted

IF the arrangements agreed between the Health Service Executive and the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation avert industrial action in the country’s overstretched emergency hospitals, they are to be welcomed.

That welcome will be even warmer if a deal can be reached within the limits of the Lansdowne Road Agreement and from current HSE resources — as has been promised by the HSE. However, the as yet unratified deal brings into play the perennial problem afflicting every settlement in the public sector.

Almost as soon as the talks had got to the point that INMO members might vote on proposals, SIPTU warned that it might seek similar concessions for its members. Once again, a straitened, challenged health service may have to deal with the domino effect provoked by measures for dealing with a very specific situation. In these circumstances — the tide that must lift all boats all of the time — any solution may be multiples of the actual cost of solving a specific problem. This is, as everyone involved must know, an example of unsustainable opportunism. It should be resisted forcefully.