Frustrated: Nurses face financial pressure with more strike days looming

A THIRD day of strike action brought 37,000 nurses and midwives back to the picket line yesterday, but with three more strike days planned next week, the industrial action is beginning to take its toll.

The dispute between members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) over pay and working conditions will see nurses once again down tools and pick up their placards from next Tuesday to Thursday.

But as nurses lose a day’s wage for each day they picket, financial worries have begun to set in.

“One of our nurses, a wonderful Italian girl, only last week was in tears because she didn’t know how she was going to pay her mortgage over this,” said Tess Shorthall, a nurse at the Coombe Hospital in Dublin. “We would much rather be inside and looking after our patients. We don’t want people to be suffering out there.”

Meanwhile, Emma Thompson, a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street, also said her colleagues were coming under financial pressure as more strike days loomed.

“I have been organising the strike days here and I know that the girl that works alongside me is worried about the days she is missing,” she said. “But that’s what we’re going to have to do. We have to remain strong to the Government. We have to remain strong until we get a resolution.

“Unfortunately for all our patients, they are being put out and they are being really good supporting us so we hope they continue supporting us.”

“We have to lose something to have something,” nurse Alice Campari said, speaking of her commitment to the industrial action.

“We are giving up the payment that we won’t have now to try and have something in the future and for our entire career.”

Fears are rising that the public support for nurses could begin to wane if thousands more appointments are cancelled next week.

INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha, however, said she was confident the public would continue to support the strike action.

“I think the public are very adamant. They know why the nurses and midwives are taking this action,” she said.

“They know that it is because the public health service is understaffed and will not be there when we need it ... when we know our population and our ageing population will have an even bigger demand and a bigger need for the health service.”

Nurse Emma Feely, from Dublin, who works on the antenatal ward at the Coombe Hospital, said she understood the “frustration” of patients but support would continue regardless of the duration of the industrial action. “I think the public will stick behind us,” she said.

“I think people will start to get frustrated and hopefully that will just show how necessary the services are, that the nursing staff are so important in the hospital.”

‘One nurse was in tears over how she’ll pay her mortgage’