Nurses demand better pay and patient provisions
Nurses today called for radical reform of the health service, putting patients first by paying those who care for them what they are worth.
At a joint meeting of the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association it was claimed that healthcare workers were being treated like second class professionals.
The INO/PNA have joined forces in the Labour Court to push for better pay and a shorter working week.
Dave Hughes, INO deputy general secretary, said frontline staff were not given the credit for their work.
“Patients and their carers have always been last in line in the delivery of our health services and nowhere is this more typified than by the fact that the nurse/midwife is the lowest paid among health care professionals,” he said.
“It seems in our health service that the further you get from the patient the higher your earnings and the shorter your hours.”
The INO planned to hold a joint rally with the PNA in Croke Park next week to demonstrate support for better pay but have moved it to The Helix at Dublin City University because of demand.
Mr Hughes said: “Wednesday’s protest rally will be both a celebration of nursing and midwifery and an opportunity for the professions to send a loud message in advance of their court hearing that they will not be treated as second class professionals.”
He added that real health service reform requires radicalism which re-addresses all the anomalies in the system and puts the patient first by valuing those who care for them.
Their claims are due to be heard by the Labour Court on June 20.
Des Kavanagh, PNA spokesman, said the court will be asked to give effect to the sentiment it expressed in 1980 that nurses should be amongst the first to benefit from a shorter working week.
“Twenty-six years on, in spite of the mental and physical nature of the work involved in the delivery of nursing care, nurses and midwives remain the only professional, technical or administrative category in the health service required to work 39 hours per week,” he said.
“They are the only former officer grade of the public service required to work such lengthy hours.”
Mr Kavanagh said there was an irony in the fact, that the HSE is now calling to standardise the hours of other grades at 35 while ignoring the fact that those providing frontline care work four hours per week longer every week.
