Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in and thank the members of their organisations for the extraordinary work they have done. Ms Ní Sheaghdha's description of the role of women in work and women's participation in the workforce is about as eloquent as I have heard in my time in this Chamber.

It is succinct and perfect, and I want to thank her for putting it on the record. I completely agree with every word she said on women's participation in the workforce and the role of childcare. If I may say so, this pandemic has shown up how we have all come to think about it in an overly casual way. As Mr. Bell said, we are reliant on the informality of help, whether it is an hour here or a pickup there, to deal with all of the additional things families require to be able to get through their working week and support and manage their children at every stage and children at different ages with different needs. What healthcare workers have done in terms of their commitment to their work is simply without parallel in this period. I feel very strongly that, at a minimum, they need to be reimbursed. It is not the correct word and I ask the witnesses to forgive me. Their work needs to be acknowledged, at a minimum, in terms of repaying them for this period with annual and parental leave.

With that as a background, I ask Ms Ní Sheaghdha and Mr. Bell for some practical details on their submissions. I refer to page 3 of the INMO's submission. I cannot quite follow the numbers and I want to ask Ms Ní Sheaghdha about them. The submission states there are 38,000 whole-time equivalent nurses working in the State while Mr. Bell's submission states there are 40,000. I am trying to get the number of people to whom this applied at the time. There are conflicting numbers and I know they came from the CSO and a HR estimate. It was stated that 8,898 was too high. I ask Ms Ní Sheaghdha to talk me through what she said. She thought the figure was 200 per week. That figure seems too low to me. I ask her to help me with that as I cannot follow it.