Health reform: It may seem an odd time to extol the success of partnership in the health service. One of the State's three big health unions, after all, is planning industrial action designed to block the setting up of the new Health Service Executive on January 1st.
However, the dispute involving IMPACT notwithstanding, hundreds of partnership projects are fostering improved relations between management and staff across the health service. Many of these are specifically aimed at augmenting services to the public, such as initiatives to extend opening hours or free up hospital beds.
Inevitably, wherever there is a partnership process involving employers and unions, there is also a good deal of jargon to be deciphered. The strategy report of the Health Services National Partnership Forum (HSNPF) speaks of "whole systems thinking" and the need to "align and soak in partnership philosophy and values". Behind the lofty concepts, however, tangible progress is being made, according to Matt Merrigan, leader of SIPTU's health division and joint chairman of the HSNPF.
On Thursday last, for example, Mr Merrigan was in the North Western Health Board area to help finalise a 'historic' new agreement on the operation of ambulance services, drawn up under the auspices of the local partnership committee.
That initiative is an example of how an increasing number of traditional industrial relations-type issues are now being dealt with through the partnership approach. The establishment of the HSNPF arose from a clause in the Partnership 2000 programme which provided for the devolution of social partnership to sectoral levels.
Following its signing, health unions entered negotiations with the Health Services Employers' Agency which led to the establishment of the forum - a 28-member body with an equal number of management and union representatives. A 24-strong team mainly comprising workplace partnership facilitators was subsequently appointed to health boards and other major places of employment, and 20 local committees were established.
The sheer breadth of the projects since put in place demonstrates that the process has delivered results and the partnership committees are no mere talking shops.
Initiatives at national level include the introduction of flexible work practices, infrastructure improvements and the provision of services outside normal working hours, such as the Young Mothers Support Group established at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth.
At local level, there are more than 300 projects, ranging from a Mater Hospital project in Dublin to prevent discharge delays and thereby free up beds, to a Midland Health Board initiative to promote positive mental health among its employees.
A recent study carried out by organisational psychologist Isobel Butler, details of which will be outlined at a conference in Dublin tomorrow, found 90 per cent of health service managers believe the partnership approach is delivering results.
The study sought to ascertain the views of those involved in partnership at all levels. The one area of negative feedback was the perceived failure of hospital consultants to engage in the process.
Another black cloud over the health service, of course, is the threatened industrial action by IMPACT. But Mr Merrigan insists the dispute does not mean that partnership isn't working.
The restructuring of the health service, he said, was excluded from the negotiations on the current partnership programme, Sustaining Progress, as the Prospectus, Brennan and Hanly reports had not been finalised.
The subsequent transition has therefore taken place outside the partnership process and IMPACT "has decided to go down the normal industrial relations route".
