CUH protest stood down at last minute
A planned protest by nurses and midwife staff at a Cork city hospital over long-awaited pay reforms was called off at the last minute on Tuesday.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) had planned to hold lunchtime protests at CUH over the non-implementation of proposals to modernise pay and grading structures.
However, on Monday, the protests were stood down following a referral of the matter to the Labour Court.
The industrial relations tribunal will now launch a comprehensive investigate into the dispute before issuing a legally binding recommendation.
The dispute, concerning the implementation of a new pay and grading structure for nursing and midwifery managers, would have seen industrial action at seven other hospitals in Ireland, as well as at CUH.
The dispute involves approximately 3,500 nursing and midwifery managers and their linked grades, represented by the INMO, Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), and SIPTU.
The INMO said the issue of the outdated system used to determine the pay of senior nursing and midwifery managers has been outstanding for many years, having first been identified in the Public Service Commission in 2018.
Following the nursing and midwifery dispute in 2019, the Labour Court recommended the establishment of an expert review body on nursing and midwifery.
The review was tasked with examining a range of issues affecting the professions, including long-standing claims relating to nursing and midwifery managers.
The expert review body subsequently recommended that the existing hospital banding system be discontinued and replaced with a new approach to determining the grading of directors and assistant directors of nursing and midwifery, taking account of their revised roles, scope, and responsibilities in the context of Sláintecare and the reform of the health service. The Department of Health is yet to implement these recommendations.
INMO Deputy General Secretary Edward Mathews said: “A new structure was determined in February 2025 to replace a banding system which is based on activity levels from 1999. Yet, more than 18 months later, that structure has still not been implemented in full.”