Psychiatric nurses across the country will start a work-to-rule on Wednesday morning as part of a long-running dispute over staffing levels in sector hospitals and community settings.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), which has about 6,500 members, said its members would not perform a range of non-clinical nursing functions during the action which is open ended from but will initially continue to provide overtime cover where necessary in order to limit the impact on patients.
PNA general secretary Peter Hughes said the union had no choice but to press ahead with the action as “staffing in mental health services has been reduced to unsustainable levels and service delivery and development has been impacted across the services”.
Unions representing the majority of HSE workers scheduled to take industrial action from next Monday, meanwhile, have agreed to attend talks intended to resolve the dispute at the Workplace Relations Commission this week.
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A work-to-rule planned for next Monday by some 80,000 workers will go ahead as planned, however, if the talks due to start on Thursday do not produce a deal.
Fórsa, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Unite, the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association and the PNA all confirmed on Tuesday morning they would attend talks which were organised after HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster moved to have the WRC assist with engagement between the two sides.
The other union in dispute, Connect, is also expected to attend as are representatives of Siptu and the Irish Medical Organisation, as the HSE seeks to address the ongoing controversy over its attempts to exert greater control over its budgets with all of the sectors of its workforce rather than be faced with action later from other quarters if it reaches agreement now with those scheduled to stage the work-to-rules.
“The INMO will attend the conciliation conference facilitated by the WRC in good faith and make the case in respect of current working conditions of our members,” said nurses' union general secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, on Tuesday morning.
“The dispute as notified is still planned,” she said, however she added that if talks are not successful at the WRC, the planned action in the form of a work-to-rule will go ahead on Monday March 31st.
The PNA’s involvement will be separate to the other unions’ as it is not affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and not a member of the HSE group of unions.
Mr Gloster’s move to seek the third party intervention followed a failed meeting between the two sides on Monday morning.
The meeting quickly collapsed with unions involved in the dispute said to have objected to the presence of the IMO and Siptu, which are not involved.
Afterwards, Fórsa and the INMO accused the HSE of not taking the process seriously. The HSE rejected this but there is said to be a lack of clarity on employer side as to what exactly the unions are looking for in order to resolve the dispute.
Mr Gloster emphasised, however, his desire to avoid the serious disruption to hospital and other services any work-to-rule would cause for members of the public.
The dispute is focused on measures introduced over the past year by the HSE to control budgets. Its ‘pay and numbers strategy’, under which the number of staff employed by the organisation has been capped at just over 133,000 this year, is seen as a necessary move to control costs at an organisation where budget overruns have come to be regarded by Government as an annual occurrence.
It points to very substantial increases in staff numbers in recent years and contends staff in key areas continue to be hired despite the limits set.
The unions argue the manner in which the limits started to be set last year, based on a census of staff on December 31st, 2023, was arbitrary. They say about 3,000 posts were effectively lost because they were vacant at the time.
The HSE argues thousands of others that were not properly funded at the time were regularised.
