Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has continually referred to strong recruitment and the figures he presented suggest that, but among all the people who have been recruited there is a growing sense of injustice at the pay gap but more starkly at what will be the career gap by the time they come to the end of their service compared to those who were employed pre-2011.

We have focused a good deal on teachers in this discussion but I want to focus on the nursing sector. As part of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's submission to the Public Service Pay Commission in 2017, it highlighted that 78% of the undergraduate nurses who are doing degree courses in our fantastic colleges around the country, the majority of whom are 23 or younger, are considering leaving Ireland on qualification. It further highlighted that the top three incentives that would entice graduates to stay were pay increases, improved staffing levels and working conditions, and access to funded postgraduate education.

We are educating these people and sending them abroad to places, such as Australia, where they are getting starting salaries of twice what we are offering here. We are taking that pool of talent away from our health service and meanwhile we are long-fingering negotiations to try to resolve that.

As I said, pay is not the only issue. Of those who participated in a survey, and who had completed their internship here, the majority of them were not offered permanent contracts until July of the year, at which stage they had been offered jobs abroad. Therefore, there are other issues in question but pay is the issue that is the causing the most division within our public service at present. We need to act on it urgently to stop a flight of graduates from the service.

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