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

I am fully in favour of cutting the pay of people at the top of the public service and politicians, and reducing the number of bureaucrats at the top of the system, but I am absolutely against having levels of staff shortages among nurses that endanger patient safety, that we do not have enough people to carry out assessments on vulnerable children with special needs or that we do not have maintenance people in local authorities who can put in grab rails or carry out renovations on houses of elderly, sick and vulnerable people. That is not acceptable. Cutting the numbers to the level that has taken place means public services are grinding to a halt and vulnerable people depending on those services are being made suffer cruelly.

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