Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Welfare and Safety of Workers and Patients in Public Health Service: Discussion

Dr. Laura Finnegan:

Yes. We are all working very long hours. We are working over what we should be working per week. It is going to take time, however. We are hopeful that everything we spent last year negotiating for will come to pass and that we will have protected rest days and will not be working 12 or 19 days in a row or be doing things like 24-hour or 72-hour shifts. They are very difficult things to implement overnight when, as we mentioned many times today, we have a staffing crisis. It is very difficult to fill those extra shifts if we do not have the staff to fill them.

We need supports in respect of everything else in order to implement changes, such as reducing the number of hours we work in a week. It is all the things we are talking about today and all the resources we need available to us within a hospital.

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