Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is difficult to overstate the level of exhaustion many of the staff have at the moment. Healthcare is a busy place at the best of times. There is a level of exhaustion now in the staff I am meeting that is beyond normal tiredness or normal busyness. It has been relentless for two years for the staff. Not only have they had to work under intense pressure, not only have they had to walk in every day to high-risk environments where many of them have got sick or got Covid-19, they have had to deal with huge trauma that has come with Covid-19. I was very taken by some intensive care nurses I met - hardened, seasoned professionals with decades of experience in intensive care. They had seen every human situation, hardship and suffering in terms of patients in intensive care, and they told me they were traumatised by Covid-19 like nothing they have ever had to deal with. They said it was a combination of how vicious Covid-19 is in attacking multiple organs at the same time but also that patients were lying in intensive care completely isolated from their families and friends, being cared for by people wearing a lot of PPE.

There is a level of trauma and exhaustion in healthcare that has to be dealt with. Obviously if such things as security are required locally, it goes without saying they will be funded. Long Covid is being taken very seriously and is being looked at. What nurses, doctors and health and social care professionals say to me when I ask them what the single most important thing is we can do for them to make their job sustainable and one they love coming to work to do, they say to me to increase the workforce. We have to hit safe staffing levels. That is fully backed and supported by the INMO and by the Oireachtas. The results from the pilot projects that were presented at the INMO conference in Cork a few years ago are beyond question in terms of the well-being of the nurses and midwives themselves. We have talked about the non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs. Much more is required than increasing the number of NCHDs. A root-and-branch piece of work is required. We need more consultants. We need more doctors, nurses, health and social care professionals, and we need to acknowledge what they have been through.