Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the confirmation of the figure of €209 million. The Minister quoted from the Public Service Pay Commission report, but it also stated there may be an issue of equality regarding the different pay scales. Our public service is different. When we send two gardaí out on the streets this evening, one of them will be on one pay rate, the other on another one. They are both putting their lives in danger for us. The Minister says we do not have a generalised recruitment issue. Can he then explain to us why we are haemorrhaging nursing graduates; why 25 graduates from the paediatric nursing course in UCC are leaving to go to a hospital in London; why the HSE regularly sends missions to India to recruit nurses to staff our hospitals; and why the emergency department in Limerick, which opened on Monday, is predominantly staffed by nurses from Croatia? We have a recruitment problem, and pay and pay equalisation are part of that problem. Unless a signal is sent or a pathway provided from these talks, if they are finalised, that the Minister understands this problem and understands that the public service must be an employer of equality, I am afraid he will have a very difficult job selling that agreement to those whom it is supposed to benefit.

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