Management at a Dublin psychiatric hospital has criticised yesterday's four-hour stoppage by nurses demanding the speedy implementation of new security measures.
But unions representing the 120 nurses at St Vincent's Hospital in Fairview said further action will take place next week, unless management convinces them that security problems are being urgently addressed.
Nurses have been demanding better security since a serious assault on a woman patient in a corridor of the hospital in June. A spokesman for the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA), one of the two unions involved, said management had been too "laid back" in its approach to the problem.
In a statement, the hospital management said it had been tackling the issue during the past couple of months and now had 24hour uniformed security in place. Paging and mobile panic-attack systems were on order and would be available in weeks.
It added that yesterday's action was all the more regrettable as both the PNA and SIPTU, the other union involved, were well aware that a major review of hospital security by the Garda's crime prevention unit was to begin next week. Management would "look positively" at its recommendations.
However, Mr Jim Mullery, of SIPTU, said yesterday's stoppage would be just phase one of a programme of action unless management moved quickly to meet the nurses' concerns.
Mr Des Kavanagh, of the PNA, said management would have to commit itself to implementing the Garda crime prevention unit's recommendations. The measures promised by the hospital should have been implemented by now.