Last Thursday we let you know that we intended to serve notice for industrial action on the Health Service Executive and Section 38 Voluntary Hospitals. I can now confirm that this notice was served this morning.
In response to the HSE Pay and Numbers Strategy, INMO members are hereby instructed that from normal starting time on Monday 31st March 2025, until further notice from the union, you should
Working Hours
- Work only within your contracted hours – do not start before your official start time or stay beyond the end of your shift. Handover time should be incorporated into your roster so when your shift ends, if handover extends beyond your working time, you must claim overtime.
- Take all scheduled breaks (e.g., meal breaks, rest breaks) in full and on time.
- Decline requests from management to swap shifts.
- Do not accept any requests from management to work overtime or additional hours to build up TOIL.
- Decline to work over weekends and/or bank holidays, unless this forms part of your normal roster e.g. 7-day service.
- Planned essential calls carried out by PHNs and CRGNs at weekends and bank holidays should be kept to a minimum as per eligibility criteria and priority 1 issues, for the duration of the dispute.
- Theatre lists must be organised to ensure no routine overruns.
- Unless contracted to do so, members should not provide on call services out of hours. If the provision of on call services forms part of your contract, do not agree to increase the frequency or duration of on call periods.
- If management seek to cancel planned leave, or other forms of approved leave, members should decline.
- In the first week of the dispute, do not work agency shifts in the public health service, shifts can continue to be worked in intellectual disability services and in private healthcare facilities.
Assigned Duties
- In addition to the specific instructions set out below, you should perform only those tasks/duties that are explicitly stated in your job description and contract.
- Refuse to take on additional duties normally assigned to other staff categories (e.g., administrative tasks, non-nursing duties).
- Do not accept redeployment unless approved by the dispute committee.
- Do not accept any new temporary, ad hoc or other acting-up arrangements during this dispute.
- Those currently undertaking higher duties, i.e. acting up, for over three months in the absence of payment per circular 17/2013 should cease immediately.
- Routine trips to, or opening of, pharmacy, including out of hours and at weekends, for collection of drugs will not be undertaken by nurses, and pharmacy supplies will not be put away by our members with the exception of controlled drugs and medications requiring refrigeration.
- Mandatory training will not be attended outside of normal rostered working hours.
- You will not attend meetings except clinical meetings, or meetings with families of patients.
- You will not undertake the transfer of patients in a bed/trolley/wheelchair unless the appropriate number of staff/porters are available.
- Routine cleaning and disposal of waste will not be undertaken by INMO members, e.g. in theatre, day surgery, endoscopy etc.
Documentation & Administrative Work
- Only complete the paperwork and documentation required for your role in the context of direct patient care, or related to the care of an identified patient, in line with your normal practice. This includes the inputting of Trendcare data. All documentation should be completed within working time.
Communication
- Members should not respond to any messages/calls sent by management outside of working time hours via text message/WhatsApp/phone call/email etc., in accordance with the Right to Disconnect Policy.
- No use of personal phones or emails for work purposes.
Local Dispute Committee
- Report nurse/midwife staffing deficits on each shift to the local strike committee.
- Direct any concerns about the action to your local INMO strike committee.
This mandate applies to all INMO members employed by the HSE and Section 38
voluntary hospitals, regardless of grade.
This instruction will be subject to ongoing consideration by the Executive Council of the INMO and if there is any change to the nature of the action in your workplace you will be informed by your local INMO dispute committee or INMO official.
This is a dispute with your employer, not patients. If there is any concern in relation patient safety, we will always ensure the provision of life preserving services to patients. This gives assurance to the public that patients requiring life preserving services will be cared for.
Regional dispute committees have been formed and local strike committees will be formed with our colleagues in Fórsa trade union to plan for all contingencies and eventualities.
Other phased action, including work stoppages, will be considered should there be a
requirement to escalate this dispute.
Now is the time to realise your mandate as members in response to this unsafe approach to workforce planning by your employer. Only by coming together and
following this instruction can you and your colleagues hope to achieve an outcome in
relation to this dispute.
We will remain in constant contact through email and will provide regular updates via our website and social media channels over the next three weeks and will arrange regional and workplace meetings with members leading to this dispute.
We as always instruct members that life preserving services are exempted from this dispute and the national executive council have established a derogation committee to consider any requests from employers for exemptions.
In solidarity,
Phil Ní Sheaghdha
INMO General Secretary