Ambulance paramedics dispute
Deputy Collins said the HSE was refusing to engage properly with ambulance paramedics and to discuss contingency arrangements during strike action. The Tánaiste said he had already answered the matter in detail earlier.
Further to Deputy Barry's question to the Tánaiste, the Minister for Health has stated publicly that he wants to see a resolution of the ambulance paramedics dispute, not confrontation. What the Tánaiste has proposed today is not in any way a solution. The HSE is refusing to talk to the paramedics. It has even refused to discuss contingency plans for today's strike action and the previous strike action days. It is the ambulance drivers and paramedics who are implementing the contingency plans in the dispute. The HSE has twice refused to go to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. The Government needs to intervene in the dispute and instruct the HSE to go to the WRC or some labour relations body because otherwise the dispute will not be resolved. Will the Tánaiste instruct the Minister for Health to intervene, as happened with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation in the nurses dispute and the psychiatric nurses?
