Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for that reply but there are several points that the Minister seems to be ignoring. Can the Minister stand over a situation whereby people doing the same job are not being paid the same amount? That is what it amounts to for graduates who came out between 2011 and 2015. People who graduated before that get the incremental credit, but people who graduated this year do not. How can the Minister justify an arbitrary decision to single out particular graduates by virtue of the year they graduated and suggest that they are worth less than their colleagues who graduated in other years?

Does the Minister accept that the campaign run last year by the HSE to try to attract back graduates was not very successful? Graduate nurses who have found work elsewhere, who are being paid decent wages and who are living in countries where the cost of living is not as high as here will continue in their current roles if they continue to be discriminated against, as in the case of recent graduates here.

The Minister has said he will review the situation on the basis of recruitment in 2016 and 2017. Again, that is completely unfair to these people. Why should they have to wait to see the result of the outcome of the review post 2017? The Minister for Health could tell the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform very clearly that the biggest issue facing the health service at the moment is the difficulty in staff recruitment and retention.

There are many reasons for that. Pay is one, cost of living is another and lack of respect and a sense that people are not being adequately valued is certainly another. People can only feel that sense is reinforced by the Minister's failure to honour the agreement the nursing unions have reached with the Minister for Health, the Department of Health and the HSE. The Minister is welching on an agreement already reached between the nursing unions and his Cabinet colleague, and that is unacceptable. Will he apply himself to this as a matter of urgency, restore parity for these nurses and take some steps to try to assist in the recruitment and retention of vital nurses in the health service? We cannot afford to delay this any longer.

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