Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

For the past three weeks under the NIB, officials of my Department, the Department of Health and Children and the management of the Health Service Executive tried to resolve this issue. A reduction to a 35-hour week, however, would represent a massive change in working arrangements, involving a reduction of 7.7 million nursing hours. That cannot be undertaken lightly. They endeavoured to find a way to do this on a cost-neutral basis. To be fair to the nurses' unions, they are open to doing that but they could not find a way to do so outside the benchmarking process. They want a final date before they discuss how the change can be effected on a cost-neutral basis. Those in negotiations on the management side rightly want to find out how this will be done and to work out a logical sequence. Everyone knows it cannot be done in a short period. It will take some time but we are prepared to make moves to start it. That must be done first, otherwise everyone has to work out how to achieve it before the final date and that is not possible.

The pay adjustment for nurses and midwives is not a major issue providing that is not treated as a relativity and does not have a knock-on effect for everybody. Only 44 people are affected by the relativity and the nurses' position is they want it extended to 40,000 people. It is a little different trying to square that but the issue can still be resolved because if there is an anomaly, the pay increase should be confined to those who suffered the anomaly and it should not have a knock-on effect. Progress can be made on that.

The Government cannot award a 10.5% increase outside the agreement and thereby break the agreement and the entire procedure involving public service workers. However, within the parameters of last week's discussions, working out the 35-hour week is a possibility. That could not be agreed last week and we will continue reflecting on that issue.

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