Nurses want to work 35 hours a week, recommended 27 years ago by the Labour Court. They currently work a 39-hour week. About half of their health-service colleagues work a 39-hour week, the remainder work a 33-35 hour week.

They also want a 10% pay rise. Nurses have been looking for this pay rise for six years. In 2002, frontline nurses got an 8% pay rise, just below the average pay increase given to over 300,000 public-sector workers.

Since 2001, the starting salary for social care workers is 34,200 . . . 3,000 more than the starting salary for nurses ( 31,233). Some 60% of social care workers have no qualifications, while most nurses now have degrees. Nurses are pursuing six other issues in relation to pay and conditions but the 35-hour week and 10% pay rise are their priorities.

What does the government want?

The government wants the nurses' dispute resolved through normal industrial-relations machinery, such as benchmarking and the National Implementation Body, the main mechanism for resolving unrest under social partnership.

There were three weeks of talks between the health-services management and the nurses' unions but those talks collapsed last weekend. As a result, the nurses' 'work-to-rule' started last Monday.

Will the government give in to the nurses' demands?

It's hard to tell. Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney and the main opposition parties say nurses should have a 35-hour week, but health-services management say they want time to plan for it and to introduce it. The government says the introduction of a 35-hour week would result in a loss of 7.7 million hours of nursing time annually and would require 4,000 additional nurses to carry out current workloads.

In relation to pay, the government wants the nurses to resolve the pay issues through benchmarking. The Labour Court also recommended they pursue their claims through benchmarking. The next benchmarking report is due later this year.

Why won't the nurses deal with their pay claim through benchmarking?

The last benchmarking process in 2002 did not address the issue of a 35-hour week or the anomaly in pay regarding social care workers. As frontline nurses got an 8% raise, below the average increase for all public-sector workers, they sought an explanation as to why. No explanation was offered as the rationale for benchmarking decisions are kept secret. Directors of nursing got a 16% pay rise while other health professions got a 12% increase.

What are nurses doing at the moment?

The 40,000 nurses in the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association are currently 'working to rule'. Nursing unions say this means they are carrying out all core nursing duties, but not clerical and administrative duties, including the use of computers, attending meetings and answering phones. Health-services management and patients' organisations say the action is impacting on patient care with surgery cancelled, computer records not being kept, test results not given out over the phone and calls to wards about patients' conditions remaining unanswered.

So what happens next?

The nurses say they are ready to go back into talks at any stage. They want a commitment on their pay claim and a date for the introduction of a 35-hour week. The government is reluctant to do a deal on pay as they fear it would unravel current publicservice pay policy. If talks do not begin before next Wednesday, the dispute will escalate and result in rolling work stoppages. This will mean action by nurses in different locations at different times across the country. The action could also spread to private hospitals.