Unions representing around 100,000 hospital staff are to ask the government to provide extra funding for the health service this year to end staffing cutbacks.
Following a two-hour meeting of the staff health panel of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, its chairman Liam Doran said the Minister for Finance must introduce supplementary funding for the Health Service Executive.
The unions are also to advise staff not to take on additional work or to operate in an environment that they feel is unsafe due to cutbacks.
No industrial action is being taken at this time and unions and management are to meet the Labour Relations Commission next Wednesday for a hearing on the heatlh cuts.
A new circular issued by the HSE to all hospital managers says that no new or additional staff can be employed.
The circular also indicates that there is to be no increase in overtime or agency spending.
The measure has been put in place by the HSE to ensure that it breaks even by the end of the year.
However, the HSE has agreed to exempt certain areas that it says are critical or exceptional from the circular.
Govt & HSE working on reform delivery
Meanwhile, the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, has said the Government is working with the Health Service Executive to ensure that its reform programme is delivered.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio's News at One, Mr Cowen said there have been large increases in health spending in the first nine months of the year, but that adjustments now had to be made to ensure spending remained within budgets.
He said the HSE has indicated it expects to come within budget by the end of the year, and that there is no requirement for a supplementary budget.
His comments come after Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said it is not up to the Government to say precisely how the HSE should operate, but that it will work with the Executive to ensure that its reform programme is delivered.
Opposition parties have criticised the effects of an embargo on recruitment within the health service, and have agreed with comments by Minister Éamon Ó Cuív that the HSE is an 'impossible organisation to deal with'.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the embargo was leading to longer waiting lists, and said consultants had told him that patients are dying at the end of waiting lists.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said Ireland has a good health service - the problem is people cannot access it.
Mr Ahern said waiting times were much shorter than they were in previous years.
He said the HSE must live within its budget - but that the Government had said that front-line services should not be affected by budgetary adjustments.
