"I certainly hope there's not another nurses' strike," says Caroline (who would not give her surname), a nurse into her second hour on the picket line yesterday. "Not in my lifetime, anyway," she adds, only half laughing.
Standing with the paediatric nurse outside Dublin's Temple Street Hospital is her colleague, Ann (who also withholds her surname), a general nurse.
"I have to say I never thought we'd still be here after a week and going into our second week on strike," says Ann. "To be honest, I really didn't think it would come to a strike at all. When I was getting up last Tuesday (the first day of the strike) I checked the teletext expecting the whole thing to have been called off."
"But I have to say the most important thing has been the support from the public, bringing us tea and coffee and soup and chocolates. The Fire Brigade has been up every day with soup and sandwiches," says Caroline.
"It's so important for morale," says Anne. "I've had only one negative comment - on Thursday - when one man came up and said: `You're a disgrace to your profession. Your only redeeming feature is that your colleagues are in there working for nothing.' That really took the wind out of my sails."
While we speak, several passing cars honk supportively. The nurses wave back.
Nearby, at the Mater Hospital, Pat Travers, a nurse in the infectious diseases ward, is on the picket with Ann Foley, a nurse in training. The nurses here are rostered by the strike committee to picket on shifts - doing six four-hour stints each a week.
"It is a long shift on picket," says Pat. "It's horrible getting dressed in the morning to come out and put on a placard to walk up and down. But I'd definitely do it again if it needed to be done."
It's the apparent pointlessness of picketing that irritates Ann. "It's so unproductive and frustrating. You just want to get back in to the wards to work. And it's cold, and tiring. It's not like a brisk mountain walk. You don't get up enough pace to get warm. It's like a long, monotonous funeral march."
Money, however, is a concern. "It's pay-day on Friday," says Pat, "and we will be docked I think 13 days' pay from this month's wages. I have heard that if we are not back working by Friday they won't be able to issue those cheques."
The strike, says Ann, is not being worn down the longer it goes on. "I wouldn't say we're becoming more militant but I think that to have been on strike now for a week, there is a determination that we won't collapse. I think that's what the Government would like, but I think the longer it goes on the more we are feeling, `We've come this far and we won't break now.' "
At the Rotunda Maternity Hospital, the chairwoman of the strike committee, Ann Monaghan, agrees. She says the aims of the strike must be vindicated.
"We're not doing this for the sake of money. If it was necessary to do it again, I'd do it again, for the benefit of the health service. I remember the huge nurses' marches in 1987 when the cutbacks in the health service started and we were all being told to tighten our belts. "I remember it vividly," she says. "Anger at the way the nursing profession has been treated has been building for a long time. The profession must be valued and respected by the service for the good of the service." Although the hospital's midwives remain determined, there is, she says, enormous anger at the slow pace of the negotiations. "The midwives are professionals. They're hurt that they have been driven to this. Nobody wants to be on strike. I wouldn't like to see this go on much longer."