Psychiatric Nurses Association to take industrial action
The Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) is to begin industrial action later this month in a dispute over staff recruitment. The union is accusing the Health Service Executive of refusing to hire new graduate psychiatric nurses in a number of areas throughout the country. The PNA said the issue of the recruitment of up to 250 new graduate nurses was part of a wider dispute with the HSE on the issue of what it described as chronic understaffing throughout the mental health services. The industrial action will commence on Tuesday 17 September and will target areas where all new graduates have not been offered permanent contracts. The PNA will meet next week to consider the exact nature of the action but it will be phased and is expected to begin as a work-to-rule. "With these new graduate nurses now coming onstream, and the failure of the HSE to recruit them into our mental health services in several areas of the country, it means they will be lost to the private sector and attracted to posts abroad," said PNA General Secretary Peter Hughes. "This cannot be allowed to happen at a time when our mental health services are struggling to cope with 700 vacancies and are being maintained through a reliance on agency staff and overtime," Mr Hughes said. The PNA said that in recent weeks it has postponed the commencement of industrial action twice to allow for continued engagement through the WRC on the issue of 700 outstanding vacancies across the mental health services. Asked about the PNA dispute today, CEO of the HSE Bernard Gloster said the workforce for the health service has now been set. "It has been expanded beyond what it ever was and that includes psychiatric nursing," Mr Gloster said. "Within that, there is room, I think, to meet some of the legitimate concern that they have, but that requires us to work together, and I would be very hopeful that we can avoid the threat of industrial action, because that certainly would not resolve the issue," he added.
