{"id":648726,"date":"2026-10-08T16:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/648726\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T16:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:54:21","slug":"nurses-stage-lunchtime-protests-at-number-of-hospitals-nationwide-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/648726\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses stage lunchtime protests at number of hospitals nationwide \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation<\/a> (INMO) are holding lunchtime protest at a number of hospitals across the country on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The staff, who are engaged in a work-to-rule, are protesting over cost-of-living<\/a> measures and the impact they are having on staffing levels. <\/p>\n

Protests were being held held at Cork University Hospital, University Hospital Limerick, St Vincent\u2019s University Hospital, The Mater, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda, Letterkenny University Hospital, Galway University Hospital, Naas General Hospital and Midlands Regional Hospital, Mullingar.<\/p>\n

The protests are planned in advance of work stoppages that will begin in the public health service next week. <\/p>\n

Members of F\u00f3rsa<\/a>, Siptu<\/a> and INMO began a work-to-rule across large portions of the civil and public service on September 30th.<\/p>\n

These unions, along with Unite<\/a> and a number of others, are scheduled to stage a one-day stoppage on October 14th.<\/p>\n

INMO general secretary Phil N\u00ed Sheaghdha<\/a> rejected a comment by Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> that public sector workers wanted industrial action \u201cirrespective of what happens\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a post-budget interview with Claire Byrne on Newstalk on Wednesday, Martin said: \u201cI just get the sense that people want industrial action almost now, irrespective of what happens. And that\u2019s a problem. I think that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Budget 2027 falls short of preventing public sector industrial action, say unionsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach was not right, said N\u00ed Sheaghdha. \u201cI think everybody in the country understands the job that public servants do. They respect it. They value it. And right now, public servants are very clearly saying that they don\u2019t believe enough was done in this budget. They don\u2019t believe it was a worker-facing budget,\u201d she told RT\u00c9\u2019s Morning Ireland on Thursday. <\/p>\n

N\u00ed Sheaghdha said the last public service agreement expired on June 30th. <\/p>\n

\u201cMe and my colleagues in the trade union movement have been involved in many negotiations of public service agreements. But what we hadn\u2019t faced previously was that just two weeks prior to that, the minister with responsibility went to Cabinet seeking approval to engage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a commitment from Government to really focus on what it means to have a strong industrial relations system which provides for a collective agreement, which provides for industrial peace. And in the absence of that, clearly, you have the opposite, which is exactly what we\u2019re facing next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

N\u00ed Sheaghdha said industrial action could be avoided, but workers had a right to have their say.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when workers in thousands across the public service have voted in very large numbers to say we\u2019re not happy with the approach the Government is taking to our dispute, to our pay, to our cost-of-living crisis, which there is, there\u2019s serious, significant cost-of-living issues for all of our members, well, then the Government must listen to that. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Public sector pay dispute \u2018unwarranted given our willingness to talk\u2019, Taoiseach saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that public servants are just taking strike action for the fun of it, I think is a little bit glib. And I would think that if we\u2019re serious about trying to find a resolution, I would avoid that type of commentary because it\u2019s absolutely inflammatory,\u201d she told RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

When asked what impact the INMO\u2019s work-to-rule was having on patients, N\u00ed Sheaghdha said her members had been asked not to engage in taking up the work of posts that had not been filled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the requests we have from the employer to date is that we would give additional hours and that people would be asked to work and fill vacant posts that haven\u2019t been filled,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we know that there\u2019s been a huge embargo in the health service on filling posts, and people are actually doing the job of two people most times when they go to work. And that has been really exposed by the work-to-rule. And that means services have been slower, services have been curtailed and next week, when we have a work stoppage, we understand that the health service will be announcing to the public today that services will be closing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) are holding lunchtime protest at a number of hospitals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5168,943,1555,1418,2120,61,60,44789,1843,43,142342,20167,73429],"class_list":["post-648726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-budget","tag-cost-of-living","tag-forsa","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-nurses-and-midwives-organisation","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-phil-ni-sheaghdha","tag-siptu","tag-unite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}