Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Ambulance personnel who are members of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA, mounted a sixth day of action yesterday in their continuing campaign to be able to join and be represented by the PNA as their union of choice. The next step of their campaign will be determined when the PNA ambulance branch, the National Ambulance Service Representative Association, NASRA, holds an extraordinary meeting on Thursday, 18 April to consider a further escalation of their industrial action. There are over more than PNA ambulance branch members including paramedics, advanced paramedics and emergency medical technicians, all of whom are determined to achieve their goal, namely, the fundamental right to be represented by the union of their choice. These members totally reject the continued efforts by the HSE to force them to be members of unions they do not want to join. Individuals and groups have a right to choose the trade union they want to represent their interests and to engage in collective bargaining on their behalf.

The Taoiseach has attempted, sadly, to characterise this issue as an inter-union dispute. That is false. The Taoiseach is purposely seeking to misrepresent this dispute. The PNA and NASRA are not in dispute with any other trade union. Nine years ago ambulance personnel decided to organise a branch within the PNA to represent them and this number now stands at greater than 500. What steps have been taken by the Government and the HSE leadership to resolve this dispute? Is the Minister for Health going to allow a situation continue where ambulance personnel have been forced out on strike due to a very solvable dispute? The Minister should talk to the HSE and do the right thing and we have far more pressing issues within the health service to deal with. He should recognise the PNA and NASRA, let these workers pack away their picket line banners and placards, and let them return to their ambulances, proud of the job they do and proud of the union that represents them.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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This issue has been brought up on the floor of the Dáil possibly every week in recent weeks. That is reflective of how unjustifiable Members feel it is that these workers are not getting the chance and the recognition to join the union of their choice. The PNA branch went on strike yesterday, which was the sixth strike it has had in recent months and it had an action day on 27 March outside the Dáil. It has full support right across the board from other trade unionists to the wider public. Prior to this strike, the HSE ignored the clear indication from the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, in the Dáil, that he wanted this issue dealt with by negotiation rather than by confrontation. A number of Deputies, namely, Deputies Ó Caoláin, Barry, Broughan, Pringle, Gallagher and myself, wrote a cross-party letter to the Minister looking for a meeting to try to tease this out with him. We have not had that meeting yet and I have been asking the Minister over the last week and a half to have that meeting to try to move it on in order to have some sort of resolution to this. The HSE has no right, legally or otherwise, to not recognise this union. It is not an inter-union dispute. The NASRA branch of the PNA is not having a dispute with any other union but 500 members were out on strike yesterday. That is more than what the Service, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, SIPTU, or Fórsa, the other two unions, have in their membership. This is a basic right for the workers to be represented by a union of their choice. We need that to be recognised. I would urge the Minister to do what he did in the background with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, and the PNA and instruct the HSE. The HSE has been invited by the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, three times to have discussions and it has refused to do so. It has refused to speak to the workers on the dispute as well.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Thursday is the Minister of State's day.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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RTÉ has "Claire Byrne Live" but Leinster House has the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, show every Thursday for Topical Issue matters. I do not say that in jest, I say it because it is wrong that the Minister himself has not presented to deliver his own script. I have to say I am exasperated reading what we already know and the points we have already made. We heard that the National Ambulance Service Representative Association, NASRA, is a group which is not recognised by the HSE, that the legal position is very clear that the HSE and the National Ambulance Service have no obligation to recognise NASRA or the PNA for ambulance personnel, that the Minister has asked officials to explore the way forward and that the fact remains that the PNA does not have negotiating rights for ambulance grades. The bottom line is that this response tells us nothing that we did not already know. What we are asking for is the Minister to make a direct intervention to recognise that the NASRA branch of the PNA represents at least the second largest body of ambulance personnel in this State and they deserve respect and recognition, full stop.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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I am also very disappointed. It is the standard reply that we have been getting even though we were hoping that this was moving on behind the scenes in at least having some sort of negotiation with the officials and representatives from the PNA.

NASRA represents nearly 500 members. When the HSE stopped collecting the dues from members' pay, it had about 350 members. Another 150 to 200 joined since but cannot be recognised by the HSE. NASRA has been in with the WRC up to the last number of weeks, negotiating and representing members but the HSE has not even spoken to the workers, the branch or the PNA about contingency plans. Those workers have put those contingency plans in place themselves, without the HSE engaging in any shape or form. This needs to be moved on and, as has been said by Deputy Ó Caoláin, there has to be direct intervention by the Minister into this dispute to try to resolve it through negotiation and not confrontation.