The protagonists in the nurses dispute, Health Minister Joe Cassar and MUMN president Paul Pace, have denied that a personality issue is at the heart of the conflict.

The minister reiterated in an interview to The Sunday Times that the government would not negotiate with the union while industrial action continues. He also insisted that there were no short-term solutions to the problem of a shortage of human resources, adding that there was disagreement on the number of nurses that are required.

Dr Cassar defended the intake of nurses at the University , and said the government was working to speed up procedures to engage foreign nurses - procedures which take months.

Mr Pace defended his union's actions, including an order for nurses not to carry medicines from the stores to the wards at Mt Carmel Hospital, and noted that at Mater Dei, it is carers, not nurses who do this work.

He insisted that the government needed to tackle the nurses shortage with urgency and said nurses did not need to be shifted between wards, because all were short staffed.

He said the MUMN would accept foreign nurses if there were no refusals of Maltese applicants for the university nursing course. The university, he insisted, needed to remove its numerus clauses.

The full text of the interview can be seen in The Sunday Times.