SIPTU nursing branch president Ms Mary Durkin is optimistic that nurses will achieve at least a 20 per cent increase in pay as a result of the benchmarking process.
Speaking at the SIPTU national nursing convention in Galway yesterday, Ms Durkin called for the introduction of safe staffing levels for nurses in existing services, prior to the development of any further services.
"Nurses are extremely stressed and burnt out, working in a chaotic healthcare environment with inadequate resources," she said.
Ms Durkin called on the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to ensure that nurses and patients were not compromised due to improper manpower planning.
"Nurses are no longer willing to work in circumstances where their registration is at risk. Patient care is being compromised as a result of inadequate resources. While the recruitment problem has been somewhat resolved, the retention issue is our greatest challenge because of increasing dependency of clients and patients coupled with increasing workloads," she said.
SIPTU president Mr Des Geraghty told the conference that only a universally funded and fully accessible healthcare service based on need rather than means could deliver the standard of care now required in this State. He called for a radical overhaul of the healthcare system starting with prevention; general practitioner services; management of health boards and hospitals; an increase in beds and staff and a proper and stable system of funding.
"We need greater investment in facilities and people, but we also need to tackle those vested interests who are responsible for the excessive costs and misuse of resources in the system. "It is evident that we need an end to the two-tier system of service and the double payment system of both public and private, which militates against fairness and accessibility," he said.
Mr Geraghty called for the spirit of the late Dr Noel Browne to inspire all those addressing the problems of the health services. Like Dr Browne, SIPTU should not be afraid to identify and deal with vested interests who did not want reform of the healthcare system and were standing in the way of progress, he said.
