Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Although I could probably speak on 20 different issues under this heading, given the time available I will speak on only one issue in more detail, namely, the rates for nurses in general and for young nurses in particular. Even from a young age, I have always found it telling how many capitalist societies force nurses, who save lives, to live on relatively low wages while paying handsome salaries to members of the elite, who play, to put it mildly, a far less valuable role in society. For example, a student nurse in his or her fourth year working in a hospital, with onerous duties and responsibilities receives €9.48 per hour, which is 33 cent above the minimum wage. The starting pay for a fully qualified staff nurse is less than €23,000 per year and yet the salary pay cap for bank executives is €500,000 per annum. Gerry Gannon, one of Anglo Irish Bank's Maple Ten, receives a salary of €170,000 per year from NAMA. A failed developer is paid eight times more than a young nurse and a bank executive can be paid more than 20 times the salary of a young nurse. This is a sure sign of a society which has its values screwed up.

Late last year, the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, published the results of a survey of 600 student nurses which showed 93% of nurses had considered emigrating. More than 2,000 young Irish nurses have left the country and gone to work in Australia alone. Meanwhile, there are more than 600 vacancies for psychiatric nurses. Why are young nurses leaving and why can these positions not be filled? Let us take a few reports from the front. Claire Treacy, the industrial relations officer for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, speaking in late 2014 on the situation pertaining in Galway University Hospital, said:

On average there are nine nurses on duty and they can be caring for 70 or 80 patients. There were nine nurses to 120 patients one day. These nurses are burned out and stressed. The hospital has been offering counselling and well-being sessions over the last few months but it is not enough. It is not one bad day at work, like other people have; every day is a bad day.

Tony Fitzpatrick, the INMO representative in the north east of the country, said of the situation in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital:

Everything is stressful. They [young nurses] go home crying. Several have told me on the drive home in the car they have tears running down their faces, that they cannot sleep at night thinking about the patients, still thinking about their colleagues at work. They know it has been impossible for them, on that day, to deliver quality care for patients.

Young nurses are leaving the country because the job is so utterly stressful. It is a downward cycle when that happens. The key to breaking that cycle is an improvement in nurses' pay. If it is increased, nurses who have gone to Australia, the UK and elsewhere will be attracted home. Increasing the number of posts will result in more nurses on wards and will lead to a situation where there will be sufficient nurses on them. The work will become less stressful and, as the word spreads, more people will be attracted home. This will then become a virtuous cycle compared to what has gone before.

In recent weeks, Luas workers achieved a pay increase of 18.3% and I congratulate them on having done so. Why not give an 18.3% pay increase to nurses, not over a period of four years but as a bold stroke over one year? The Minister and the Government will no doubt say the country cannot afford it. However, the country cannot afford a scenario where money is spent educating and training young nurses before forcing these incredible national assets to emigrate and resulting in us losing the benefit of that investment? This is skilful economics as well as a humane approach to the issue. The hidden pay traps in place for nurses need to be removed in addition to giving them a pay increase. The nurses' hand-over involves one nurse coming off duty while another is coming on. He or she has to be informed of the position regarding the patients on the ward, which can take half an hour. Nurses do not get paid for that in many cases. On wards where there should be three nurses, there are two because of cutbacks. What happens when they need a lunch break? They cannot go to the canteen or off campus. They have to eat their lunch in a room beside the ward but they are not paid for that. What about the position of the many nurses who, de facto, do the work of ward managers but who have not been promoted to the relevant positions? In other words, they are ward nurses in practice but not in the context of title or salary and they have to take a hit as a result. What about the many opportunities for training and, flowing from that, promotion that have been denied to them during the austerity years? These issues need to be tackled and resolved.

I refer back to the example of Luas workers. I urge the Government and the House to implement these policies. I believe they make sense but I have no confidence in a Fine Gael-led minority Government implementing such policies. The issue, therefore, needs to be driven by workers and the unions that represent them. They could do a lot worse than consider the example of the Luas workers who set out their case and made a militant stand for pay increases. If nurses make a similar stand for an increase, the vast majority of ordinary people in this nation will be fully behind them.

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