Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have made general points around this issue in the previous debate but following on from the more specific aspects of this amendment, the figures the Minister gave were very revealing and confirm the argument I made to him earlier on this issue. The area where there is the highest level of absence through sickness is in the health service. That is no surprise. The percentage is higher, the numbers are higher and the cost is higher because the Government has butchered the health service. It is obvious.

I spoke to a local authority worker before I came into the House about a study of ordinary bank workers - not the people at the top - I think in Bank of Ireland which reported that two thirds of sickness of among workers in banks has to do with stress. Why is that? Is it because bank workers are inherently more subject to stress? Not at all. It is because ordinary bank workers have been at the sharp end of the anger and indignation people feel about what has happened to this country. Of course, it was politicians and people at the top who were actually responsible but the ordinary bank workers feel the stress and must deal with it. If we broke down the Minister's figures on the health service, we would find exactly the same thing that the stress is induced by having to work longer hours, harder, with fewer resources, with more demands and more desperate people. I do not know if the Minister still does clinics but I am more stressed going into my clinic now than I was a year ago because there are more desperate people around.

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