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

Yes. According to RTE, the figures it obtained from the HSE indicate that almost 11,000 nurses left the profession between 2010 and 2013 and 1,000 more are scheduled to retire this summer. Is the chaos in our health service the result of people being forced to work harder under the Haddington Road agreement, resulting in the huge culling of nurses from our hospitals, particularly our accident and emergency departments? Is it not the case that the reason nurses are flooding out of the system is because they are at their wits end and completely stressed because their incomes have been slashed, thousands of beds have been closed and billions of euro has been taken out of the health service? Nurses can no longer bear that because not enough resources, staff or beds are available in the system patients and staff are suffering. It is a disaster.

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