A senior hospital consultant at South Tipperary General Hospital has called for "24 hour-a-day negotiations" to resolve the health workers' dispute which has affected many hospital services today.
Dr Paud O'Regan, a consultant physician at the Clonmel hospital, said the health service will "quickly grind to a halt" if the threatened three-day strike goes ahead next week and said the Minister for Health needs to realise the gravity of the situation
He described the impact of today's work stoppage by thousands of SIPTU health support workers as "major and almost catastrophic", leading to the cancellation of elective surgeries, endoscopy and other diagnostic procedures in Clonmel and other elective procedures in hospitals nationwide.
"A very big setback for a one-day strike," Dr O'Regan told RTÉ. "One shudders to think what the effects will be if it goes ahead next week."
He said that some diagnoses of cancer will be delayed because of endoscopies being postponed, "with the great worry and inconvenience for families of that".
The veteran consultant said the HSE and labour relations mechanism "are back in a confrontational 1970s-level" when it comes to strikes.
"The tragedy is that there's such a human aspect to the results of these strikes. It will of course be settled and it is a matter of the greatest urgency that the dispute be settled before next week."
Dr O'Regan said the people on strike are "an absolutely vital part of the hospital work, just as vital as the doctors and nurses" and that without them the work "can possibly be done in a very limited way" for one day, "but it's impossible to see how it could be done for three days".
He said he gathered from the workers involved that the strike was a "last resort" and that they are "the lowest paid people in the health service" who are having to deal with high housing and other living costs.
"I think they're entitled to the increase in pay that I gather has been recommended after examination of the work they do, and of the complexity and importance of the work they do."
Asked how a three-day strike next week would affect the service, he replied: "It would be a disaster, but on top of an already over-stretched situation, both here and nationwide. It just doesn't bear thinking about, it cannot happen.
"There needs to be, if necessary, 24-hour-a-day negotiations and people rapidly getting to a position that they will inevitably get to when this dispute is settled. Let's settle it this week rather than next week or the week after, because the victims of all this are human beings who are suffering in an already pretty dysfunctional system, brought to total malfunction with this action."
He added that "everybody, including the Minister for Health, needs to recognise at this stage what a crisis it is, both for the service and particularly for the poor individual patients affected by it".
Asked to compare the current strike to other health sector disputes, such as the recent nurses' strike, that have hit the service over the years, the consultant said: "I think this in fact is more damaging than most other strikes in that it goes into every corner of the hospital function and will grind the whole service to a very quick halt with the damage, as I said, to patients."
