Nurses’ action ‘very worrying for patients and families’
THE industrial action taken by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) is clearly creating significant challenges and disruption for the health service and, more importantly, has created a worrying time for patients and their families, Health Minister Simon Harris told the Dáil.
He said he acknowledges this is not an action nurses and midwives take lightly and that the situation must be resolved. ‘ The Government remains steadfast in wishing to resolve the matter,’ he said. ‘ This is a debate about how one resolves an industrial relations dispute in the context of a public service stability agreement, which I believe most if not all parties in this House profess to support. It must be remembered by everyone in the House that the Government, and the unions, including those involved in the dispute, signed up to a threeyear public service pay agreement. Honouring agreements does matter.’
Minister Harris said the public service pay agreement takes significant steps towards pay restoration. ‘ That agreement commits to seeing significant increases in pay by 2020, and nurses and midwives can expect to see their share of the increases beginning this year,’ he said. ‘Reductions for pay levels up to €50,000, which include a large proportion of the nursing and midwifery profession, will be fully unwound by the end of this year. That represents a wage increase of between 2% and 2.5%, on average, across the sector, with new entrants and lower-paid professionals benefitting the most from the changes. ‘We are eager to come to a fair and satisfactory solution for all parties involved that preserves the integrity of all elements of the agreement,’ he said. ‘That puts us in a difficult position in terms of how we reach a solution which respects the public service stability agreement and the other unions who represent other hard-working public servants who are not engaged in industrial action.’
While the disruption is creating a worrying time for many people, contingency plans have been activated by the HSE to ensure urgent life-saving care is maintained throughout this industrial action, he said. ‘I recognise that the unions are co-operating in terms of contingency planning in these regards.’