The health service faced significant disruption countrywide on Wednesday, with thousands of appointments, surgeries and procedures cancelled due to a protest over pay.
The largest industrial action of its kind in almost 20 years, community and hospital healthcare workers, as well as disability workers, staffed picket lines over no new pay agreement.
All routine hospital appointments, planned surgeries and routine hospital procedures were cancelled.
[ ‘Inflation is rising, so should our wages’: Live updatesOpens in new window ]
In community care, all clinics and appointments were cancelled, including physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, podiatry, chronic disease management services and child health services.
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Day services, which include child and adolescent mental health services and antenatal clinics, were closed.
For the first time since its establishment in 1922, members of the Irish Dental Association took part in strike action, with more than 200 Health Service Executive dentists stopping work on Wednesday. Association chief executive Fintan Hourihan said many members feel as though the dental service has been diminished, with special care services for children with disabilities being particularly affected.
The HSE said home support was prioritised for people with the “highest care needs and those who are most vulnerable”.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said special derogations were made to ensure patients in need of acute, emergency care were still able to receive this.
Emergency departments, urgent cancer treatment and dialysis continued, while ambulances had a curtailed service.
[ Unions urge Taoiseach to intervene in bid to avert public sector strikeOpens in new window ]
GPs, GP out-of-hours services and pharmacies were unaffected by the action.
The HSE said it would contact affected patients, adding that all cancelled appointments would be rescheduled.
Healthcare workers across four Dublin picket lines maintained they did not want to be there and would prefer to be able to care for their patients.
Jane Culligan, a medical scientist at the Mater hospital, said: “We are annoyed with the Government that the public pay talks have fallen through. Inflation is going up and our pay hasn’t gone up in line with that. We feel the pinch.”
[ Public opinion may shift if the second strike goes aheadOpens in new window ]
Patrick Burke (29), a physiotherapist at the same hospital, said: “The cost of food . . . is increasing regularly. Even transport to work as well and ability to buy houses . . . A lot of my friends went abroad to Australia. I decided to stay. Now that we’re here now, we’re trying to get better working conditions and pay to encourage more people to stay in Ireland.”
Ciara Loftus works with the frailty team in the hospital’s emergency department. She is still living at home at the age of 25.
“I feel like I’m going to be forced to move country by the end of the year or next year,” she said. “It’s not sustainable.”
