The annual conference of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has unanimously voted in favour of a motion which sanctions industrial action in the event of enforced pay cuts by the Government.

The emergency motion mandates the INMO to continue to explore alternatives to the Croke Park 11 proposals.

However, the motion also provides for industrial action, up to and including strike action, to be taken if the Government imposes pay cuts in the public sector.

Nurses and midwives at the conference spoke of their unwillingness to take any more cuts to their pay.

INMO President Claire Mahon, in her address to delegates, said the overwhelming rejection of the Croke Park 11 proposals had not convinced the Government that it must look at alternative ways to find additional funding, the most equitable of these being a progressive taxation system.

"The choice will be Government's. We are willing to re-engage. We are willing to make payroll savings and we have made suggestions of alternative measures which can produce savings without any further reduction in our income, in our pay rates, in our premium rates or increase our hours of work," she told the conference in Letterkenny.