Chaos in the health service looms after support staff overwhelmingly voted for all out strike action.
The vast majority of 17,000 health support staff backed industrial action with the first stoppage set to get under way within weeks.
The dispute, which would hit 36 healthcare facilities nationwide, has come to the boil mainly because of a refusal to consider pay rises.
The Government has decided against putting into action the findings of a job evaluation, which looked at whether some roles should receive better rewards.
Some grades of health care assistants, porters, chefs and cleaners would have seen their salaries soar by up to €2,000.
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Almost all of the chefs - 96% - and 94% of support staff voted in the SIPTU ballot for strike action during the Croke Park pay justice conference on Friday.
Workers complained to SIPTU Health Division Organiser Paul Bell that they felt disrespected and alienated.
SIPTU Deputy General Secretary for the Public Sector, John King, said: “The response from our members today is clear and emphatic.
“Our union is demanding meaningful engagement with Government on the resolution to this long-standing issue once and for all.
“Our members have played by the rules, and kept the health services going in recent times.
“They deserve to get the pay justice they have waited so patiently for.”
Mr King added that their members have the full backing of the union on the issue as it was “conceded as part of a previous national public sector agreement”.
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Meanwhile, SIPTU Health Division Organiser Paul Bell said: “The size of the vote in favour of strike action undoubtedly demonstrates our members’ anger with the Government due to their failure to give them the fair and equal treatment they demand.
“It is a fact that this vote was brought about by the failure by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe to honour the provisions included in the Lansdowne Road and Haddington Road agreements.”
He added: “It is never our members’ desire to engage in strike action, which will put additional pressures on the health service.
“However, after months of obstruction our members have been left with no option but to express themselves and their frustrations.
“The ball is now in the court of the Government and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. They can either pay our members what they are owed or face the consequences.”
