More than 80,000 health sector employees are to commence industrial action on March 31st in a dispute over staff numbers, unions have said.
The action by members of Fórsa and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation will initially involve a work-to-rule and “other non-cooperation actions”.
It will impact the HSE and hospitals such as St Vincent’s and the Mater in Dublin and Cork University Hospital, with big disruption to services forecast should the action go ahead.
The unions say the HSE’s Pay and Numbers Strategy, which sets out limits on the numbers employed by the organisation and the budget for paying them, poses a risk to patient safety by imposing arbitrary ceilings. They argue that the manner in which the strategy was introduced resulted in up to 3,000 existing posts being lost last year.
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“INMO members voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action last November to send a clear message to the HSE that moratoriums and severely restricting the recruitment of patient-facing posts is in breach of many safe staffing agreements between healthcare unions and the HSE,” said INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha as notice of the intended action was confirmed on Monday.
“Nurses, midwives and other safety-critical professionals within the public health service must have a greater say in how hospital wards and community care areas are staffed.”
Fórsa’s head of health and welfare, Ashley Connolly, said “members have continued to express frustration over the crude imposition of staff cuts since the recruitment embargo”.
“Ireland’s population is growing and it is also an ageing population. These factors demand a more robust approach to workforce planning in our health service,” she said. “An approach that doesn’t involve spending millions on private for profit management consultancy, whose main advice appears to be the suppression of health posts that need to be filled.”
The unions said strike action would be considered if there is a need to escalate the dispute.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Claire Byrne Show, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said the proposed industrial action was unjustified given the “huge” recent growth in HSE staff numbers despite the control measures.
He suggested the “regrettable” move would breach the terms of the current public sector pay deal.
“At the start of 2020 there was 120,000 people working in the Irish health service and at the start of this year that was 148,000 even though there was a recruitment pause for a period in late 2023 and ’24 and there’s now a set number of staff for the health service,” he said.
“Right throughout the period the number of nurses, doctors and allied health professionals have continued to grow. But I think there has been a view created that that somehow all recruitment stopped in late 2023 and nothing has happened since.”
Responding to the union complaint regarding the 3,000 posts lost when a new limit on staff numbers was based on a census conducted on December 31st, 2023, Mr Gloster said some 4,000 other, then unfunded posts, were regularised as part of the process.
He said controls over pay and numbers like those introduced in the HSE since were a feature of every organisation “both public and private”.
Mr Gloster said every hospital in the State had submitted rosters for the upcoming bank holiday weekend that would improve decision making in emergency departments and across services generally.
He said with 2,700 consultants now on the public only contract, a “critical mass” had been achieved that allows consultants to be safely rostered over seven days.
His comments follow criticism by Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill of the arrangements put in place for the St Brigid’s holiday weekend last month.
