James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion on nursing pay and recruitment and I am glad to support it. Our nurses work to an incredibly high standard. I know this because my sister is a public health nurse. They remain committed to the task at hand amid intense pressure as our hospitals and care centres struggle to cope with a lack of resources.

The HSE has a clear shortage of doctors and nurses working in our hospitals and in our communities. Research from the ESRI shows how we will witness increased demand for healthcare services over the next decade. To meet this rise in demand, the Government must address the need to recruit and retain key healthcare staff and, in particular, nurses.

As my party's Front Bench spokesperson on mental health, I have seen first-hand the amount of pressure that psychiatric nurses endure on a daily basis. Within mental health services, nurses' conditions of work are so poor that no pay would convince many of them to stay on. Wholly unsatisfactory working conditions make it difficult for nurses to meet the overwhelming demands on mental health services. Safeguards against assaults on staff within psychiatric facilities at times appear non-existent. Often the patients who carry out assaults mean no harm, as they are not in control of their own actions during these assaults. However, nurses in the mental health services clearly face increased risks from such assaults in their line of duty. There is no question but that the shortage of staff is a key contributor to this. Accordingly, special measures are needed to ensure they can carry out their work in a safe manner. Last week, The Irish Timesreported on how staff members at one psychiatric unit were recently threatened by a former patient with a butcher's knife. The situation was so severe that staff locked themselves and patients into rooms. The Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA, believes that staff shortages and the lack of development of alternative services, as highlighted in A Vision for Change, may be linked to the growing number of assaults on healthcare staff. For example, according to a PNA survey, there is a significant shortage of staff in Waterford's mental health service.

The dearth of resources places an extraordinary burden on these nurses who meet families with children in dire straits. The impact on the nurses' own mental health must be horrendous. We saw some of this impact only last week at a meeting of the Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care, when some excellent staff came before us to explain their experiences and the stress they are under. Waiting times are chronic and children are not being assessed for mental health services in a timely fashion and sometimes not at all. At the end of January this year, 1,635 children had been waiting more than 12 months for a primary care psychology appointment. It is almost impossible for nurses to triage in such desperate situations when there is such a backlog of patients awaiting treatment.

The increasing number of patients presenting means that patients do not get enough time for medical attention from a nurse. Conditions will not improve unless the Government takes action and tackles the dysfunctionality of our healthcare system. We spend the fourth highest amount per capitaon healthcare yet we have the worst healthcare system in Europe in terms of waiting times. The HSE must take measures in order that our nurses want to stay in Ireland and not leave to go to the NHS, a situation that almost certainly will become more acute in the event of a hard Brexit. We are losing too many graduates to the UK and who could blame them? When they leave here, they leave behind salary packages that are lower, and abroad they find they have accommodation packages, good conditions and upskilling opportunities but, more importantly, they feel appreciated. The Government needs to comprehensively resolve once and for all recruitment and retention and show that nurses are deeply appreciated in this country.

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