Multiple healthcare unions have decided to suspend their planned work-to-rule action that was due to begin on Monday.
The group includes the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Fórsa, Unite and the Medical Laboratory Scientist Association, among others.
It follows 22 hours of engagement in the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) between unions and the HSE regarding proposals to recruit and retain staff into the public health service.
Work correspondent for the Irish Times Emmet Malone told The Anton Savage Show that the key points of the deal relate to firmer procedures for the replacement of staff who take maternity leave and firmer arrangements for consultation on staff numbers.
“Bernard Gloster (HSE CEO) came out of the meeting at about 10 o’clock this morning, said that he was very happy that the unions have recognised the fact that the HSE simply has to have limit on budgets,” he said.
“But they will be part of the process in the future, and he said that they will be consulted more clearly and a more structured way going into the summer now before the HSE present its case for staff number for 2026.
“Minister Carol McNeill will have their input in front of her when she goes to Cabinet, so I think the detail of this will become apparent over the next 24 hours when the WRC issues a document that’s been agreed here.”
Nurses in the accident and emergency dept. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)However, Mr Malone said that there was still a question mark as to how staff numbers will be impacted.
“One of the key issues for all of the unions had been that when this ‘pay and numbers strategy’, this budget which set limits on total pay in the HSE and also the number of staff,” he said.
“When that was introduced in December of 2023, they did a census essentially on the last day of the year, December 31st, and any posts that were vacant to that point were essentially lost.
“What they’re going to do now is go back, revisit that process, look at the posts that were lost and look at perhaps reactivating them and filling them.
“So, it’s a complicated deal; there’s a vagueness to it, I think.”
According to Mr Malone, thousands of procedures across the country have been saved from cancellation.
Main image: An empty sickbed is standing in a treatment room in the hospital. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB
