Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

We surveyed our members very recently. I do not believe they are out of kilter with healthcare workers throughout the world. The response rate was very high at nearly 3,000 and nearly 82% of the respondents said that Covid-19 has had a negative impact on their mental health. That is not surprising. It is consistent with the findings of other nursing unions across the globe with which we tic-tac all of the time.

The World Health Organization, WHO, says that exposure time must be reduced. In other words, if I work on a Covid ward, I need to be relieved from work on such a ward and from constantly wearing personal protection equipment, PPE, and to be assured of sufficient rest time to recover before coming back in to face it again. That is not happening because we are very short-staffed. We know of instances of nurses across all age groups from students to those who are very close to retirement who must wear PPE constantly for periods of six hours before getting a break for hydration. One of the simplest things to do is to ensure that nurses finishing a tour of duty have a set period of time, paid for by the employer, to provide relief and to ensure they can look after their own physical and mental health. This is a very difficult environment. One gets very warm when wearing PPE. It is very restrictive.

Nurses, doctors, speech and language therapists and all other healthcare workers are doing their best to be innovative with regard to communicating with clients. It is amazing what healthcare workers have done in trying to communicate and get messages across to patients who are intellectually disabled right across the sector, from acute hospitals to community settings and long-term care. One of the things coming across is exposure to lonely patients. I refer to patients in the community, particularly the elderly in nursing homes, who no longer receive visitors. The healthcare workers are now doubling up as their main mental and moral support. That is fine if a centre has enough staff to provide the required time but staff are feeling guilty because they do not have enough time to spend with these patients. Of course, there is mental anguish. We hope not to see a staffing crisis that is even worse than it was going into the pandemic. We can do things to prevent that.