Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry I missed a good bit of the discussion but it cannot be helped.

It is apt that members of the public service pay commission on the health sector are before us today when the Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA, and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, are meeting to discuss the commission's report. The commission ignored recruitment and retention in their report but not in their presentation today. Maybe they intend to deal with that now. Many members have asked about the future of mental health services and staffing, in particular nursing staff. There are more than 2,000 vacancies, of which more than 700 are in the mental health sector. These include 88 vacancies in the St. Ita's campus, 76 in St. James's Hospital, 56 in Dublin north city, 62 in Galway and 46 in Louth-Meath. Did the commission factor in the implementation and future development of A Vision for Change because only 30% of it has been implemented so far? We need more than 700 nurses just to stand still, not to speak of the implementation of the outstanding 70% of recommendations.

Did the commission factor in the potential retirement of 1,752 nurses immediately and over the next few years? That number is, shockingly, 34.2% of mental health nurses in the country. The current position is unsustainable but those figures paint a depressing picture of the future. We have discussed what caused the current problem, for example, the yellow pack grade offered to nurses some time ago, which we defeated. The former chief executive officer of the HSE, Tony O'Brien, shortly after the haemorrhage started, acknowledged that we forced them out. We shot ourselves in the foot with the moratorium. Everybody should have known that health would have been affected because the moratorium resulted in the loss of almost 10,000 nursing posts. We have seen that the mental health care needs of our population and, significantly, of the children born in that lost decade, have been compounded, as has their suffering and the demand for care.

A total of €300,000 per week is spent on overtime. Overtime costs €2 million annually for nurses in mental health care alone. That is not sustainable.

The number of vacancies in mental health nursing has increased by 200 since last year. Nurses say that shortages would be best addressed by an across the board pay rise for their grade, yet the commission proposes a €20 million increase in allowances aimed at a small area. Nurses are demanding an across the board pay increase. A survey published today and funded by the Health Research Board showed that 36 of 51 Irish medics and staff who were interviewed in Australia indicated they had no plans to return due to the broken health system and the misery they experienced working in the health service here. The focus is on salary as well. There was a presentation to the committee before the summer which showed that pay here, given all the other external factors, does not match pay elsewhere. It is shocking that 34% of mental health nurses will retire in the next five years.

When will the working week of 37.5 hours, which nurses secured following various industrial disputes, be reinstated? In some cases, nurses are still working one extra day free per month. Did the commission address this issue in its report? The Chairman commented on the long hours nurses are working.

I welcome the increase in the number of nurse graduates. Unfortunately, there are no mentors in the hospital with the experience to mentor them and young nurses who are not yet competent are running wards of 35 people. We have to address the haemorrhage of experienced nurses because they are not returning.