Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

We are on the record and have said from the outset that when we have 6,000 staff out sick and we have an unpaid workforce of 1,500, what do people think they are doing? I do not accept, nor do they, that they are standing in a supervisory capacity and not engaged in the business of work. Of course they are working and they are not getting paid. The Collins report looked at the period between September and December and concluded that if the situation in the health service changed, it was open to the Minister to revert to the situation that was put in place by his predecessor last March. We asked the Minister last night if he was going to do that but his answer was "No". Nobody can argue that the situation has not changed. Since January the situation has been, by any examination, much worse than it was last March. Many students had three weeks of their placements suspended but fourth years have not had their placements suspended. The Department of Health has advised that student nurses in first, second and third year will gradually return to clinical placement but it is extraordinarily haphazard. The higher education institutes cannot tell us if those students will have to redo the placements that they could not do because their training was suspended. Not only are they not paid, they will actually be the only students in the country for whom the higher education institutes did not provide an alternative learning option.