CHALLENGES THAT faced Irish nurses over 90 years ago continued to pose problems for health service staff in the present day, the secretary general of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO), Liam Doran, said yesterday.
Mr Doran said issues such as working conditions, education and workloads brought about the foundation of the INO in 1919, and the “significant but not overwhelming challenges” remained as valid today as they were then.
“Our vision of what the health service should be has still not been realised, but we hope to move towards it over the next few years.”
Speaking at a conference to mark the 90th year of the INO, which now has 43,000 members, Mr Doran said cuts in pay and allowances were hurting nursing staff at present, but that there was an untold story about what had happened in the health service over the last 18 months.
“This moratorium is hurting the health service. It’s really hurting the quality of patient care. The bottom line is we are losing 150 nurses a month. They are frontline posts, not backroom posts, and the Government has consistently refused to do anything about it.”
Minister for Health Mary Harney and Health Service Executive (HSE) chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm were expected to attend the conference. However, Mr Doran said Ms Harney was unable to attend because of a Dáil vote. A spokeswoman for the HSE said Prof Drumm had intended to go to the event, but unforeseen events precluded his attendance.
Mr Doran said he was disappointed by Prof Drumm’s absence as he had been invited to the event more than six months in advance.
“We haven’t met Prof Drumm now for 15 months, nor, I believe, has any union.”
Mr Doran said he felt contact between the INO and Prof Drumm was important given the HSE’s attempts to reconfigure health services in many areas.
“We have not had as much contact with Prof Drumm as we would have liked; we do meet his team regularly but we would prefer much more ongoing formal and informal contact with him.
“There are broken promises, broken commitments about maintaining the quality of access, the speed of access and the quality of care. Not only are they being broken to our members, but, more importantly, they are being broken to the general public and patients by the HSE.”
Mr Doran said reconfiguration efforts in hospitals in the northeast and mid-west were causing problems, and responsibility for this rested with Prof Drumm.
“The responsibility lies four square on the shoulders of Prof Drumm because he championed the reconfiguration of services in the northeast and promised better services to the people there ... He failed the people of the northeast and failed them badly.”
