Talks to end nurses’ dispute to resume at Labour Court today

TALKS aimed at ending the nurses’ strike broke off yesterday without resolution.

Representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, the HSE, and the Government met at the Labour Court to end the dispute over pay.

All sides had entered the Labour Court at 11am but talks were adjourned last night and are set to resume at 3.30pm this afternoon.

Before the talks started INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said she was ‘not overly optimistic’ at the prospect of a breakthrough in the dispute.

She said she had not seen any change in the Government’s position.

As it stands, 37,000 nurses are set to strike across three days next week – and it could get worse.

The Psychiatric Nurses Association announced yesterday its members will ramp up industrial action with strikes on February 19, 20, and 21.

This is in on top of the three days of strikes already planned for next week and which are timed to run alongside the action by the INMO.

Following a meeting in Portlaoise, the PNA’s national committee made the decision to up the ante in their action over what it said is the recruitment and retention crisis in psychiatric nursing.

PNA general secretary Peter Hughes said the decision was made due to a lack of urgency by the Government to bring forward realistic proposals that deal with the extent of the recruitment and retention crisis.

The nursing strike, however, is starting to take its toll on patients.

In yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail Dr Doireann O’Leary spoke about how her 74year-old father, who has lung cancer, had two cancer scans cancelled as a result of the nurse strike.

The Cork-based general practitioner said if not for her training and her insistence on her father getting a private appointment, then instead ‘he could be sitting at home dying of cancer and not even knowing’.