Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The INMO executive council met yesterday. I am deeply disappointed that it rejected the proposals, although I respect the right of its members to do as they wish. What is really important is they have now provided three weeks and six days before a work-to-rule takes place across the Irish health service, a work-to-rule that I believe, and the INMO has conceded, would be detrimental to Irish patients. We need to use those three weeks and six days to try to resolve this dispute. As was prearranged, the INMO is today attending the Lansdowne Road oversight group and I await the input and instruction from that group. We know the structure of that group in terms of unions and management. I hope it will suggest further discussion and dialogue, which is essential. I understand significant progress was made on a number of elements and I know there were one or two elements in particular on which the INMO did not feel adequate progress was made. I want to use this time. We will only resolve any dispute by sitting around a table and trying to sort it out. What nobody needs in the Irish health service is industrial action.

In regard to the NTPF, to be clear, no matter how many times it is asserted, I did not ask the NTPF to change anything in regard to protocols, its website or anything else. The NTPF has confirmed to me again, as recently as during this debate, that there has been no change in the way the preplanned and pre-admit lists are reported in the new protocol and the NTPF has not, since its establishment, under six Ministers for Health and five Governments since 2002, published the pre-admit lists. They were published yesterday and I have given a commitment in the House today that they will now be published each and every month until that body of work with Trinity is finished.

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