Pressure mounted on the Government over the crisis in the health system last night as public health doctors moved to escalate their dispute. Talks will take place on Monday about further bed closures at major hospitals in Dublin.
With the Labour Party's national conference this weekend due to hear sustained criticism of the Government on health, the party's spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, last night called for emergency measures to tackle the crisis in what she said had now become a "Third World health service".
She said the public was "shocked and bewildered" to see bed closures and chaos after so much money had been poured into the system.
An emergency motion was passed at the annual conference of the Irish Nurses' Organisation in Galway last night calling on the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to intervene directly in the public health doctors' dispute.
Mr Martin, who attended the conference earlier in the day, appealed to the doctors, who are on strike over pay and working conditions, not to escalate their action. The Irish Medical Organisation has now applied to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions for permission to mount all-out pickets outside hospitals across the State, which would effectively close them down.
"I regret the fact that we have an industrial relations dispute with the public health doctors," Mr Martin said. "I've made it clear there is an imperative to resolve this strike. I am anxious to resolve this dispute. There is a substantial offer on the table. We have to resolve it within the context of public pay policy and inevitably it will have to be resolved in the context of industrial relations machinery," he added.
The Minister was accused of massaging figures for bed closures in the eastern region after he insisted yesterday that only 81 hospital beds had closed so far this year in the area.
The INO said 20 beds had also already been closed at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin; 16 had closed at Beaumont Hospital, with a further 70 due to close there on June 1st; and 25 had closed at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.
Addressing the conference, Mr Martin acknowledged that delegates were concerned about an announcement on Tuesday that 250 beds were to close at the five major teaching hospitals in Dublin.
"As of yesterday there were 81 beds closed and when you take into consideration the 520 extra beds put into the system since this time last year it leaves us with a net increase of 439 beds, a fact not widely acknowledged," he said.
On the doctors' dispute, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, insisted in Dublin that they had already been given a generous pay offer. Urging the doctors, who have been offered pay rises of between €12,000 and €27,000, to use the existing industrial relations system, he said: "That is not an insubstantial offer. And I think it is worthy of consideration."
The president of the INO, Ms Clare Spillane, rallied the organisation's 28,000 members to shout stop to any further cuts, saying no amount of public relations or spin would alter the fact that the current round of cutbacks, including bed closures, would hurt the old, sick and most vulnerable.
Public beds were closing while some hospitals were expanding their VHI beds in order to generate income, she added, describing this as unfair. She also criticised as unacceptable the "ongoing intergovernmental disputes" between the Ministers for Health and Finance over the funding of the health service.
She said pay was the key ingredient for retaining staff in the health sector. The State was now wholly reliant on overseas nurses to staff the health services, with up to 25 per cent of staff nurses in some instances coming from outside the State.