Talks intended to avert a work-to-rule by 80,000 nurses and other healthcare workers – due to start next week – continued at the Workplace Relations Commission on Thursday night as unions considered HSE proposals in relation to staffing levels which are at the root of the dispute.
Sources said the document included proposals for greater consultation with unions on future staffing levels, higher levels of conversion of agency posts to staff jobs and a range of initiatives to improve training and recruitment in areas such as medical laboratories.
There was agreement the unions would individually respond to the proposals and so the talks, which started at 10.30am on Thursday, were continuing into late evening.
There was no immediate indication, however, of enough progress to avert either Monday’s scheduled work-to-rule across the country or the widespread disruption to hospital and other services it will bring or the related one-day stoppage by members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and Fórsa next Thursday at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.
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That 24-hour strike was announced on Thursday morning in reaction, the unions said, to the continued booking by management at the hospital of significant numbers of agency workers for next week when staff will be involved in industrial action.
Fórsa’s Ashley Connolly said the hospital’s actions suggested “a complete disregard” for the industrial action. Phil Ní Sheaghdha, general secretary of the INMO, accused management at the hospital of “deliberately attempting to undermine the dispute as notified and to put pressure on people to break the dispute”.
Among the other health-sector unions represented at the WRC were Connect and the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association, both of which are also due to participate in next week’s industrial action, and the Psychiatric Nurses Association, which commenced a separate work-to-rule on Wednesday.
The Irish Medical Organisation and Siptu, which were invited to participate despite not being directly involved in the pending action, were also represented.
The dispute is focused on staffing levels across the health service and the setting last year of a ceiling on total pay and staff numbers. The unions contend the limits set out are not adequate given the service’s overall needs, and argue many existing posts vacant at the end of 2023 were in effect “suppressed” due to the arbitrary manner of the process.
The HSE says its staff numbers have never been higher, that the equivalent of 28,500 full-time staff have been added to its workforce since the start of 2020, an increase of almost a quarter, while more than 6,000 additional staff will be recruited this year despite the limits set.
HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster has also said costs must be controlled and every large employer, whether in the private or public sector, sets budgets for its staffing costs.
He also revealed, however, that despite repeated commitments to reduce the amount the organisation spends on outside agencies, the HSE spent €863 million in 2024 on hiring agency staff, another substantial year on year increase to a figure that has grown hugely over the past decade.
Unions say this increasing reliance on agency workers shows the caps set under the Pay and Numbers Strategy are unrealistic in terms of meeting the needs of the service and highlight the need to hire more staff.
“It is clear that the rise in population growth has not kept up with demand for services and higher levels of acuity,” INMO head of industrial relations Albert Murphy said.
“The employer must accept that implementing strict recruitment caps is having a devastating impact on the safety of workers and the patients in their care.
“Every area of the public health service, from maternity to palliative care, has felt the impact of necessary positions being left vacant.”
