Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Donnelly referred to the nurses' strikes 20 years ago, or more. The last nurses' strike in which I was involved was in 2009 in Sligo. There one in Limerick that year and an all-out national strike. I am sitting across from people who I am sure will fondly remember those times.

I love how the national wage agreement is selectively quoted, just as I did when I was a union official. There is a clause in the agreement of which the Minister will be aware because I have told him about it several times. Others will be aware of it also. It states that the parties reserve the right to return to renegotiate the agreement in the event that circumstances change. When circumstances changed several years ago, nurses, midwives, and every other worker in the health service, including those opposite, those agreements were renegotiated to facilitate a cut in pay. No agreement is immune to renegotiation as I was often told by those who wanted to do so.

I would like to get some comfort from the witnesses on home care packages. A lady named Margaret O'Reilly was on the radio yesterday. She is a double amputee who is waiting on home care and home care support. She and others, some of whom work in the health service and some who have told us confidentially, assert that the budget has been spent and there is no more money for home care packages between now and the end of the year. Is this the practice? People have told us that they not being allocated sufficient hours, and we could argue all day whether we can ever have enough hours. Some of this information is anecdotal and I have put down parliamentary questions to get to the bottom of the matter but I would like confirmation on whether there has been an effective ban on additional home care packages because the money has run out.

Pay is central to recruitment and retention. When INMO general secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, appeared before the committee she disputed something Deputy Donnelly said. She said:

Irish nurses are not well paid by comparison. We have international comparisons that are compiled not by us but by the International Council of Nurses, affiliated to the World Health Organization. They clearly indicate that, out of the nine main countries that are English-speaking with western medical styles, Ireland's pay is the lowest.

That is borne out by the numbers of nurses who are graduating and leaving the country. Pay must be central. Mr. Mulvany and I have spoken previously about the conversion of agency staff into directly employed staff. Are there targets for this? If so, are they being reached? Is there a money-saving target, or does it relate to personnel, that is, how is it being quantified? What is the figure for targets that have been allocated for this year? Have these been reached? What will be allocated for next year?

I refer to consultants who are not on the specialist register but are being paid as consultants, which relates to an issue raised earlier. I asked Ms Rosarii Mannion about this when she appeared before the committee on a previous occasion. How many are there? The witnesses must know. There are a certain number working as consultants who are not on the specialist register and who are getting closer to a contract of indefinite duration by the day. What is being done to ensure that they get the qualifications that mean they can be added to the specialist register?

The Taoiseach's comments about holidays were referred to earlier. There was a specific reference to nurses and doctors which was offensive to them.

On access to diagnostics, is it the case that it is an issue of staff but rather than an unwillingness of staff to work out of hours? My understanding is that there is an agreement in place going back to Towards 2016, which was in place from 2006, a section of which referred specifically to the operation of out-of-hours. That was around 13 years ago. I do not think there is a problem in getting staff to work, but with the actual staff numbers. Will the witnesses comment on that?

I refer to CervicalCheck. I may have spoken incorrectly earlier. What Mr. O’Carroll said is that no on-site audit was conducted in the outsourced laboratories. I do not know what the difference is between a visit and an on-sight audit. Mr. McCallion will know this. Can he confirm whether that audit took place or not in every place where a woman who availed of the service would have her slide examined?