Striking nurses will have their wages docked for the duration of their work stoppages, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said today.
Speaking on RTÉ radio this morning, HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm said: "For hours not worked, everybody will have pay removed."
As members of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) stood down during the second round of work stoppages at five hospitals in Dublin and Roscommon today, Mr Drumm said: "For any period of time that people are not at work anywhere in our [public] service, nursing or elsewhere, people are not paid.
"The longer this goes on, all that does is polarise people," he added.
Three weeks of talks between the INO, PNA and the National Implementation Body broke down without agreement at the end of March over nurses' demands for a 10.5 per cent pay increase and a reduced working week to 35 hours.
Industrial action has followed during the last fortnight, with work-to-rule action being stepped up to work stoppages twice this week.
Today nurses staged a one-hour work stoppage from 11am until noon outside Dublin's Beaumont Hospital; St Ita's Psychiatric Service and St Joseph's Intellectual Disability Service, Portrane; Roscommon General Hospital; and Roscommon Mental Health Services.
This morning, Prof Drumm insisted the HSE could not move on the issue of pay outside of the benchmarking process and would not move on the issue of a reduced working week before nurses agreed to new working conditions.
"I do not believe that nurses are ultimately out to make a huge fortune out of the State in terms of their pay claim," Mr Drumm said.
"I think the big issue here is that they want fairness, and I think that they want to see a reduced working week. I think fairness can come through benchmarking, and I think the reduced working week . . . we can work on very quickly."
Commenting on the second work stoppages by nurses in a week, Prof Drumm said: "I'm asking for a logical approach,"
Adamant that the Government remained immoveable over the dispute, he said: "What I'm saying is, this doesn't have to happen. Because the longer it goes on, the more polarised we become from nurses who are a critical part of our delivery system.
"I don't want nurses disenfranchised from transforming the health service," he added.
Also speaking on RTÉ radio this morning, Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary David Begg said he was certain a solution to the deadlocked dispute could be found, but he said the hours issue was "key" to ending the stalemate.
"I believe, ultimately, that a settlement of this is possible - but I believe that we need to get back into very serious detailed talking about the hours question and show that some progress can be made there, if we are to get the confidence of the nurses in a possible settlement," he said.
"It would make a huge difference," Mr Begg added.