Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

My colleague Ms Harkin-Kelly will give a brief overview of some of the issues that new entrants and student nurses particularly have identified as issues for them.

To address Deputy Donnelly's questions, I will start with the issue of pay. I believe the Deputy had left the room when I addressed the matter. Pay most certainly is priority number one for nurses, just in case the Deputy is in any doubt.

On the issue of fiscal space, I find it incredible that at the third economic dialogue, which was two weeks ago, health was not on the agenda. When I questioned the Minister for Finance in respect of the fiscal space, I asked him why he was prioritising a rainy day fund and why that fund was coming out of the fiscal space when we know — without being smart — the health service is absolutely flooded and leaking. We are still allocating €500 million to a rainy day fund, supported, as I understand it, by the Deputy's party, Fianna Fáil. I ask the Deputy not to be depressed because he actually has decision-making power in the position he is in to argue it is now time to invest in health to ensure we do not face what we are all telling him we will be facing this winter.

There are other budgetary decisions that can be made. The tax that was placed on sugary drinks is one example. The Minister's prediction for income from that is approximately €40 million. That is not ring-fenced for health, yet the health service is dealing with the problems of diabetes, obesity and other matters that directly affect the health and well-being of our nation because we are not tackling the alcohol dependency issues and bad dietary habits. If revenue from excise duties on cigarettes and alcohol and tax on sugary drinks amounts to nearly €100 million, why are we not investing it in health to ensure the health service is adequately funded? This is one point the members could certainly address.

With regard to the issue of tax relief for private health insurance, it has been said already that if there is cross-party support for Sláintecare, and if Sláintecare is the answer we get each time we raise the difficulties, which it is, and we support it and believe it is the right model, then we have to consider how we fund it from a timed perspective. We need to start showing citizens what occurs if we do it right. No citizen of this country has ever said in any patient survey that when he or she actually gains access to the service, it is bad. They say access is the problem. We are supplementing private health insurance in this country through tax reliefs to a quite considerable degree. The last figure I saw was €353 million. That is a lot of money. If our public health service had enough capacity, one could unwind that taxation supplement and there would be money to invest in the transition fund for Sláintecare. That has to be the focus.

The people who work in the service are doing their best. There are now looking to the Oireachtas. We wrote to this health committee to give them some support. It is not good enough to say one examined all the statistics and concluded nurses and doctors were well paid and that the service was adequately funded; that is not the case. Nurses are, in fact, the lowest paid in all the countries that are very actively recruiting from us. Brexit will exaggerate that in the United Kingdom. We know the United Kingdom is under severe pressure. It has approximately 20,000 nursing vacancies. They love our nurses and graduates. They love our nurses who are qualified for two or three years and they give them massive responsibility because they are able for it.