Irish nurses, who held a campaign of ground-breaking industrial action last summer in support of a campaign for significant pay rises and a shorter working week , have agreed at their conference this week to ballot members for industrial action [1] if upcoming talks with the Irish government do not generate a 10% pay rise.

Last year's dispute [2], which won a commitment from the Government to reduce the working week of nurses to the same as that of other health workers in Ireland and also a pay rise worth 10% over two years, was only ended on a very close vote to accept the offer. Nurses in Ireland were clearly still very unhappy, and the INO conference this week has rejected the 'benchmarking' process (which has been the mechanism for assessing all public sector workers' pay in Ireland for several years and was supposed to resolve last year's dispute) and committed the union to ballot for industrial action if demands for a 10% pay rise this year are not accepted.