Nurses who are working in the Emergency Department of the Mid Western Regional hospital in Limerick and who are members of SIPTU plan on taking a third day of industrial action next Tuesday 4 October.
In a statement, SIPTU said this evening they plan to stage a further four-hour stoppage next Tuesday from 8.30am to 12.30pm to highlight the unacceptable conditions in the emergency department.
Mid West Nursing Organisor Jim McGrath said staff were undertaking this third work stoppage in order to finally make management respond to the deteriorating situation in the accident and emergency department, due to under-funding, patient overcrowding and a shortage of nursing staff, all of which have been exacerbated by the hospital reconfiguration programme.
The nurses staged a four-hour work stoppage has today.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was concerned about the industrial action.
He said the latest figures for that hospital showed there were only six people on trolleys this morning, with another 41 in an overflow ward, awaiting assessment and admission.
He said hospital management had put proposals to the unions last night at the LRC, but they had not been accepted. Those talks were due to continue, he said.
The work stoppage was "unsafe, unsound and unwarranted" according to the Minister for Health.
James Reilly told the Dáil that he failed to see how the strike improves the situation.
"It could lead to more danger for patients, not less," Mr Reilly said.
Mr Reilly said he found it hard to reconcile the fact that nurses are taking the industrial action given that they were party to the Croke Park agreement.
He expressed surprise that the unions did not consider a series of new measures put to them at the LRC last night.
He said it appeared nurses, who want the moratorium lifted, won't move from their position. "That's just not possible," the Minister said.
Mr Reilly said that unions better look around and see the hardship that people are enduring, and remember that they are in public service.
He said we have a duty of care to our citizens, and unions should act accordingly.
The capacity of the health system is not being fully utilised, he said, and we need a change of work practices.
Talks at the Labour Relations Commission, which went on for five hours last night, failed to find a solution which may have halted the work stoppage.
While HSE management accepted the sincerity of the issues of patient safety raised by nurses, the moratorium on recruitment and the huge financial deficit in which the hospital finds itself, prevents them from addressing the issues in the immediate or medium term.
Mary Fogarty, INMO Industrial Relations Officer said the reconfiguration process, which saw the consolidation of all emergency services in Limerick from Nenagh and Ennis, had failed as the additional 135 beds promised under that process had not materialised.
In addition, 100 acute beds in the hospital, and 174 elderly day care bed in other hospitals in the region, had closed.
She said it also emerged during last nights talks that €8m in funding for 13 additional consultants under a plan known as '100 plus', initiated by former Minister for Health Mary Harney, had never materialised for Limerick.
Nurses were joined on the picket line by colleagues from Galway University Hospital, who are also facing severe overcrowding in their emergency department as a result of taking in extra patients from Roscommon after its emergency department was closed.
Paul Bell Divisional Head of SIPTU said nurses in emergency departments across the country are under severe pressure and he could not rule out further industrial action this winter, as emergency departments face into their busiest period of the year.
Their action is the second four-hour stoppage at the hospital in eight days.
Nurses say both Minister for Health Dr James Reilly and the Heath Service Executive have failed to address their concerns.
Fianna Fáil's Health Spokesperson Billy Kelleher said Mr Reilly had failed to act to eliminate the chronic overcrowding despite his election promises and that Galway University Hospital, as well as Limerick, was also under severe pressure because of the closure of the Emergency Department at Roscommon County Hospital.
No plans to downgrade Portlaoise - Kenny
Meanwhile, Mr Kenny has confirmed that there are no plans to downgrade Portlaoise Hospital despite rumours of a HSE plan to do so.
He was replying to the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who said he had a HSE document that detailed plans that were the very opposite to Government promises about that hospital.
Mr Kenny said it was an important, busy hospital in the midlands and there were no plans to downgrade it.
