The Irish Nurses' Organisation is to seek paid leave for nurses who use their holidays to assist athletes attending the World Special Olympic Games in Ireland next month.
This follows the adoption of a motion, despite some opposition, to seek pay for the work at the union's conference in Galway yesterday.
Proposing the motion, Ms Regina Durcan said it was European Year of the Disabled. The games were of such a unique nature that nurses who gave up their holidays to assist should be financially rewarded.
She said public representatives would be attending the games, in which 7,000 athletes are due to take part, and wouldn't have to take unpaid leave to do so.
Two nurses said, however, the work should be done on a voluntary basis.
Ms Helen Carey, Cork, the mother of a disabled child, said she travelled to Lourdes every year to help invalids. She paid her way and worked voluntarily and the payback was seeing smiles on the faces of those whom she helped.
But Ms Kay Garvey, of the INO executive council and the mother of a handicapped child, supported the call for paid leave for nurses taking annual leave to help with the games.
"Nurses are being sat on and walked on all their lives. We are the handmaidens of every crowd in this country and it's time we sat up and got paid for our work."
Nurses also voted to pursue vigorously the introduction of a 35-hour working week. Deputy general secretary Mr David Hughes said the union would be back in the Labour Court on May 20th demanding a 35-hour week. Rejecting the demand was not an option, he warned.
And he went on to condemn the Mid-Western Health Board for failing to give community nurses, who had a vital role in supporting elderly people in their homes, permanent posts.
A nurse with the health board, Ms Anne Long, said some of the community nursing staff had been temporary for 25 years. She called for the "exploitation" to end immediately.