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Almost all courts in the Republic will close on Wednesday due to strike action by over 300,000 public sector workers, including teachers and nurses. While most services are suspended, emergency hearings for domestic violence and child safety will continue, and hospitals will maintain life-preserving services.
Almost all of the Republic’s courts will close on Wednesday if strike action by more than 300,000 public sector workers proceeds, it was confirmed on Monday.
The announcement follows discussions between the Courts Service, its staff and unions to establish what level of disruption would be caused. On Monday, the Courts Service said it would have no option but to close the vast majority of courts in Dublin and countrywide, while counter services will also be suspended for the day. Some exceptions have been agreed with unions in order to ensure emergency applications related to domestic violence or child-safety issues could be heard.
An Garda Síochána will be able to apply to have accused people remanded in custody where station bail has not been granted. The High Court will also deal with injunctions sought to protect life, safety or welfare, said the Courts Service. It had already been confirmed that thousands of schools would close if the action was not averted or postponed, with some 90,000 teachers set to strike and picket their workplaces.
Teachers unions, including the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, whose members joined the ongoing work-to-rule on Monday, were working to get placards and other strike-related materials out to members countrywide in advance of Wednesday morning. Special Needs Assistants and other school staff will also be staging a stoppage.
About 32,000 public sector nurses will be involved, and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said staffing levels broadly equivalent to overnight rosters would be provided, with the action only affecting hospital day shifts.
“We have already said we’ll cover all life-preserving services, dialysis, chemotherapy, all of those services; there’s just no debate about that kind of stuff,” said INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha. She said the union was meeting the Health Service Executive on Monday afternoon to finalise some of the cover arrangements but suggested patient numbers were not being appropriately reduced where possible to limit disruption.
“We’re going to provide night duty levels, but part of is that the hospitals should be reducing admissions. But that doesn’t appear to have been happening and there seems to have been no change to the discharge numbers this weekend compared to the previous weekend. ” Non-consultant hospital doctors who are members of the Irish Medical Organisation will provide Sunday levels of staffing through the day shift.
Areas including palliative care, cancer care, maternity services and sexual assault units have either been exempted or are subject to higher levels of staffing agreements. Hospital consultants will be on-site during the day but will only work on tasks directly related to the provision of patient treatment and care, the union said. About 2,000 laboratory scientists are also due to strike, causing the postponement of, or delays to, patient tests.
In addition to the Courts Service, several Government departments and agencies, including the Revenue Commissioners and Department of Justice, are expected to close offices. Local authority services are also expected to be severely disrupted, with many libraries and public offices among the facilities set to close.
Talks have been continuing about the derogations required to operate some essential areas, with senior civil servants involved in buildings management, human relations and industrial relations all exempted from the action by their union, the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, which will have about 2,500 members on strike. The numbers involved from other unions vary from about 360 for the Veterinary Officers Association up to 100,000 for Fórsa, which organises across a huge number of roles and grades.
Many unions report substantial recruitment in recent weeks, a common phenomenon in advance of strikes prompted in part by non-members seeking to avoid having to pass pickets run by colleagues. Derogations were refused in relation to the Government’s AI Summit on Wednesday at the RDS, but the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment said the event was being organised by an outside company and will go ahead.
Public Sector Strike Court Closures Teachers Strike Nurses Strike Ireland
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