The HSE has today warned a number of options - including a pay suspension - would be considered in dealing with industrial action in the health service.
Speaking this morning, Sean McGrath, the HSE's national director of industrial relations, said a letter being sent to all HSE staff "was to ensure all managers and staff continue to deliver and serve patients and clients".
In the letter, Mr McGrath said the situation would be monitored closely and “all appropriate actions will be considered, where necessary, to protect patient services and the HSE’s statutory obligations”. The letter urged staff to “co-operate with all requests to carry out your full range of normal duties with immediate effect”.
Speaking on Morning Ireland. he said: "We have a number of options open to us - it's not a particular place we want to go - obviously by reassignment, reappointment, redeployment to other areas, partial deductions in pay, suspensions from pay. We'll keep the situation under review . . . as long as we have do."
Asked why disciplinary action had not been taken, Mr McGrath said the action was "quite limited," adding: "There's a work to rule across the public sector, not just the health sector . . . and we don't want to exacerbate the situation. . . . If we take a very, very hard approach on this, we'll obviously increase the risk for patients and clients."
He denied the communication was linked to a meeting of the Ictu Public Services Committee on Monday at which an escalation of the action will to be discussed.
Referring to a comment he made yesterday that unions were fighting last year's battle, Mr McGrath said he believed the Government was not for turning on salary cuts and urged a "fundamental transformation" of the health service in conjunction with the unions.
"At the end of the day, our overriding objective in the health service is to provide services for the taxpayer and the patient, and by and large that is the most important thing. We will not put them at risk in industrial action or whatever, and we will take whatever action in required to ensure that does not happen."
Speaking on the same programme, Kevin Callinan of Impact said the communication was part of a pattern followed by Mr McGrath and other senior management in which they communicate directly with staff.
"The tone of it tends to be patronising, tends to be hectoring, and in recent times there's an intimidatory kind of tone to it," he said. "The key point is it fails to grasp the reality of the situation which is that public servants . . . will never accept what was done to them last December because they, along with social welfare recipients, were targeted to bear the entire burden of the fiscal correction.
"The result of what the Government has done hasn't created one cent more in terms of the Exchequer than the proposals from the trade unions . . . and the transformation agenda hasn't advance three months later from where it was last December," Mr Callinan said.
In the Oireachtas, unions today said staff they represented would "block" phone calls and emails this afternoon. In a statement, the Civil, Public and Services Union, Public Service Executive Union, and Impact said the move was an intensification of industrial action.
An intensification of industrial action by some 55,000 public servants over pay cuts began on Monday and includes not answering telephones in parts of the HSE.
The HSE and welfare workers involved in the escalated action include many administrative and clerical staff, social and childcare workers and other professionals including speech and language therapists.
These members have been instructed not to take on work associated with all vacant posts, and members are also refusing to deal with requests for information on parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests.
Elsewhere, the Passport Service has warned it can no longer guarantee a 10-day turnaround for applications submitted through Passport Express, due to the public service industrial action. The 10-day service has been suspended until further notice, the office said.
Garda stations across the State were also interrupted yesterday as industrial action by public sector union members targeted the Department of Justice. The action included the Courts Service, immigration centres and the Probation Service.
A Dáil committee was told yesterday that moves to introduce two centralised call centres for the ambulance service were being hampered by the public service industrial dispute.
A spokesman for Siptu, the State's largest union, today said the Ictu meeting on Monday would allow different unions to assess where their respective actions were, and to bring increased co-ordination to these.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said it will use the meeting to propose an escalation of the campaign involving a withdrawal of labour for short periods on a rolling basis across the entire public service.
