NURSES at St Ita's Hospital are preparing for more strike action later this week if a breakthrough is not achieved at national level in the public sector pay dispute before Thursday's deadline.

Chair of St Ita's branch of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), John Rogan said: 'We are hoping that there might be a breakthrough to save the hardship but we are ready to take the same action as last week.'

He said that the first day of action was a successful one at St Ita's with a full turnout of staff on the picket-lines and a system working to 'keep all the bases covered' at the hospital while the action took place.

If this week's action goes ahead then it will take a similar form to the first strike with nurses walking out in two threehour shifts from 9am to noon and between 2pm and 5pm. They are protesting about what they see as further threatened attacks on their pay in the upcoming budget.

Mr Rogan, said that most nurses had already lost more than € 100 per week as a result of the pension levy on public servants.

He said that his members had derived 'no benefit' from the levy which he said was 'effectively a pay-cut'.

Nurses fear that this time their so-called 'premium payments' will be targeted. 'These are payments we get for working at all the times that nobody else works like night-shifts, Sundays and Christmas Days when everyone else is eating their turkey.'

He said his members had come to regard the payments as part of their 'core salary' and could not afford to do without them.

Mr Rogan said that nurses were also facing higher workloads because of a moratorium on recruitment. 'That is leading to dwindling staff numbers and higher workloads,' he said.