Approximately 1,800 extra patients could be operated on every year at Limerick Regional Hospital if theatre nurses worked all the hours they are paid for, the Health Service Executive has claimed.
It said "irregular" work practices among the nurses appeared to have evolved over many years and included late starts, early finishes, unofficial tea breaks and unofficial time off and it wants them to come to an end.
Minister for Health Mary Harney said she was "very disturbed" by the news and she understood there were similar problems in a number of other hospitals.
Nursing unions, however, reacted angrily to the HSE's comments, saying they were without foundation. The Irish Nurses Organisation said it was a "smokescreen" to deflect attention away from overcrowding in A&E units, which it was constantly highlighting. Ms Harney denied this.
John O'Brien, the manager of acute hospitals in the midwest region, insisted there was a problem with theatre nurses not working all the hours they should.
They were collectively earning €½ million a year for hours not worked, he said.
"They sign in and sign out. We have very specific information about average hours worked," he said.
"We are farming out a number of procedures to the National Treatment Purchase Fund that we could do in-house if this problem was solved," he added.
Furthermore, he said, a number of new consultants were having difficulty accessing theatre time because of the problem.
However, a member of the consultant staff at the hospital, when asked for his view, said the suggestion that another 1,800 operations could be performed with theatre staff working more hours here and there seemed "a very, very optimistic figure".
It was not as if surgeons and other staff were sitting around doing nothing while they waited for theatre nurses to show up, he added, but he stressed there were "a number of issues in relation to theatre work generally".
The HSE is engaged in negotiations with the nursing unions on the issue. A meeting was held on Tuesday between the HSE, Siptu and the INO and further talks are planned for next Wednesday.
The INO rejected the HSE's claims as "a cheap shot" and said it had in 2004 written to hospital management detailing 19 concerns, ranging from poor management of the theatres to employing the skills of nurses inappropriately in washing floors and changing rubbish bags. None of these concerns had been addressed, it said.
Siptu's national nursing official, Miriam McCluskey, said Siptu categorically rejected any suggestion that its theatre nurses would be anything other than completely committed in their role. "And any suggestion coming from the employer that in some way there is a deficiency in their contribution is not accepted by us," she said.