Weekend talks expected to try avert hospital strike action

General Secretary of the Irish Nurse and Midwives Organisation, Liam Doran has said representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, the HSE and the Department of Health are expected to sit down over the coming weekend in a bid to avert planned strike action.

Hospitals, inlcuding Cavan General Hospital, have begun making contingency arrangements that will see hundreds of non-urgent appointments and procedures cancelled.

The hospitals where nurses will strike next week include Beaumont and Tallaght in Dublin; University College Hospital Galway; Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore; Cork’s Mercy University Hospital; Cavan General Hospital; and University Hospital Waterford.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said he hoped the work stoppage would not go ahead.

Members of the INMO, working in the country’s 26 Emergency Departments, rejected last Tuesday, by a margin of 58% to 42%, proposals, brokered by the WRC, to address overcrowding, staffing and patient safety issues in these departments.

This lack of confidence was confirmed, in recent days, when, once again, when hundreds of patients were on trolleys in Emergency Departments across the country.

INMO members, repeatedly articulated the view that this demonstrated senior management and clinicians, at hospital level, had not prepared for the inevitable surge, in the early days of the New Year, which left patients and staff once again in crisis.