The Minister for Health has urged nurses to accept the Labour Court recommendation on pay increases.
Mary Harney was speaking to RTÉ radio after more than 40,000 nurses announced they are planning a nationwide work-to-rule from Monday week as part of their campaign for improved pay and conditions.
She said a work-to-rule would not be in the best interests of patients or the health service. She stopped short of asking the nurses to hold off their work to rule but instead urged them to accept the pay offer made to them and to participate in a forum which would look at the question of reduced working hours.
"My ambition is to see nurses come into a forum where changing work practices would be very much at the heart of that agenda," she said.
She added that she believed the setting up of a new forum represented the best way forward but there could be "no question" of hiring 4,000 extra staff to achieve the working time reductions that were being talked about.
Under the work to rule, nurses and midwives from both unions will be banned from carrying out clerical, administrative and IT work.
Nurses will not make or answer telephone calls except in essential circumstances and they will not attend attend meetings with management at local and national level, except where an individual patient's care is concerned.
Speaking at a lunchtime protest in Galway, Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) general secretary Des Kavanagh said nurses would never refuse to take part in talks but that their actions would continue until they had assurances that the pay increase and the 35-hour week would flow from any such talks.
Earlier today, Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) general secretary Liam Doran said the work-to-rule was designed to maximise disruption to management and to minimise disruption to the patient.
"The Taoiseach and the Minister for Health have accepted that our grievances are legitimate. However, no formal talks have been planned and therefore our campaign continues through this escalation," he said.
"The next stage, for which we also have a 96 per cent mandate, is for short rolling work stoppages, and these will be commenced at any time after this work-to-rule begins."
Des Kavanagh said nurses had entered the "last chance saloon".
"We have given the employers 21 days' notice. We gave them a further week this week when we organised the lunchtime protests in Cork, Galway and Limerick. They now have a final 10-day period in which they either come to the table or face the consequences," he said.
The escalation of the campaign will be announced later today by the INO and the PNA. They held lunchtime protests in Limerick and Galway.
The move comes as health service management warned that what they term "lightning strikes" proposed by the nursing unions could give rise to "serious ethical, legal and professional considerations" for those involved.
In a statement released this morning the Health Service Executive (HSE) said all the issues associated with the INO/PNA campaign were the subject of an in-depth examination by the Labour Court that recommended that their pay claims should be processed through the Public Service Benchmarking Body.
The HSE also said that it may be possible to introduce a cut in working hours of nurses and midwives through broader talks on a modernisation and change agenda, involving all other relevant groups, under the provisions of the new Social Partnership Agreement - Towards 2016.
It urged the unions to accept the Labour Court Recommendation and also the terms of the new Social Partnership Agreement.
In a letter to the two unions earlier this week, the Health Service Employers Agency expressed concern at the provision of emergency cover in the event of work stoppages.
It said that the decision of the unions not to engage meaningfully on this issue "will seriously compromise the capacity of employers to provide a safe level of care to patients".
A spokesman for the agency said it questioned whether the absence of specific notice regarding the proposed action was consistent with the provisions of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act and of the Scope of Practice Framework of An Bord Altranais.