The two nursing unions, whose members engaged in more than seven weeks of industrial action last year in pursuit of a pay rise, are today expected to announce that they will once again ballot members on industrial action.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) are bitterly disappointed with last week's benchmarking report which recommended a pay rise for only a small number of senior nurses. Thousands of staff nurses, public health nurses and clinical nurse managers looking after whole wards got nothing.
The INO national executive met yesterday to consider what it should do next and will announce its decision today. It is understood it is considering returning to the Labour Court with its pay claim and there is also a strong possibility it will ballot its members again on industrial action.
Senior PNA officials met on Monday to consider their response. It is understood the PNA is not ruling out industrial action including strike action.
There was no official comment from either union last night but when the benchmarking report was published last week the INO's general secretary Liam Doran said the nurses' "campaign for justice" would continue.
He added that if the benchmarking body had found the claim for a pay rise by most nurses was outside its terms of reference, then the Government had to find another way to deal with it if "conflict" was to be avoided.
Des Kavanagh of the PNA said last week that if further industrial action was taken by nurses, it would not be in a mild form.
The benchmarking body recommended pay increases for only about 1,000 senior nurses out of a total nursing workforce of more than 40,000. The pay increases go to assistant directors of nursing and directors of nursing as well as those in clinical nurse manager III posts.
Nursing unions had argued that given the expanded role of nurses, they should get paid more. But the benchmarking body rejected this. It said in its report that while it received submissions from the Health Service Executive and nursing unions about plans to expand radically the role of nurses, "no details were given of agreed proposals for specific changes". The body also rejected the nurses' claim for a Dublin weighting allowance.