Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I knew that was coming. Two of them are considering becoming nurses. A number of members of my family are in the nursing profession. I had to be honest with the two young people in question. I think being a nurse is a noble profession. There is no doubt that it is a vocation. It is something about which one must think long and hard. However, I also had to tell them the truth because I had to be honest. It is a very difficult profession. It is a profession that is not just difficult because of what it involves but because of the environment that has been created in this country for people in the profession. I would advise people to think long and hard about going into nursing. I would still advise them to go into it but they would have to understand what they are getting into because it is not the same career that it was even as recently as 20 years ago. It is completely different. As a body politic, we are going to have address this issue pretty quickly. At a time when we have a trolley crisis and when we consider the conditions in which many nurses work, the situation in many maternity wards, accident and emergency departments, particularly at weekends, and psychiatric wards, the future of many different services, the uncertainty surrounding certain services and what is expected of nurses, we must understand that this is a very difficult profession and we must address the problems relating to it.

We must address the standard of pay when we compare it with that in other countries. Many people who enter the profession want to stay in Ireland. However, a survey of those going to college and becoming nurses has shown that a large quantity of them have said that they will leave. They will do so because they know what they are facing into, not because they want to leave. They will leave, go abroad and work and earn an awful lot more in Australia, Dubai, Great Britain and other locations because they know the conditions in which they will work. It is not all about money. It is about the working environment and the place where they will end up. They can see it with their own eyes. They must go out and train. They know what is ahead of them. I see it every day. My local hospital is University Hospital Limerick. The conditions in which some of the nurses, many of whom live near me, have to work are, quite frankly, scandalous. They are scandalous because of decision-making that has happened over the greater part of 20 years. Some of the nurses end up sick and getting injured. To leave them in those circumstances is unacceptable.

We must also do something about security in hospitals fairly quickly, particular when it comes to protecting those who enter this profession because this is becoming more of an issue every week. We see many cases of nurses being assaulted. When it comes to a policy from Government, and we did this through Sláintecare, of trying to make it more viable to enter this profession, if people working in the profession are not even protected to the level they should be, it is a fairly desperate situation.

I also want to raise a few issues that could help the situation. The over-reliance on agency staff is becoming crazy. There is no continuity of care and no certainty as regards the volume of people who will be entering the wards from day to day or into various different areas because of this over-reliance based on a failed policy over a period.

Something that would significantly help many in the nursing profession - I have been a strong supporter of this and have spoken on it in here and at meetings of the Joint Committee on Health on numerous occasions - is fast-forwarding the roll-out of various different components of the national ehealth strategy in view of the conditions in which many nurses work, the paper trail, the administrative burden and the fact that they are unable to take lunch and are staying on at work. Relations of mine who are employed at Tralee General Hospital often stay on an hour later in the evening because they have to complete administrative work. That is not acceptable. They are working an extra hour for nothing. It is a vocation. If the procedures had been put in place to ensure that we can have an ehealth strategy and all the various components of that rolled out, there would no need for the administrative burden imposed on nurses and midwives.

I am disappointed the Minister of State with responsibility for older people had to leave. I am disappointed the Minister, Deputy Harris, is not present.

In my remaining few minutes I wish to raise an issue relating to nurses in the rehabilitation unit in St. Patrick's Hospital in Cashel. This is happening right now; I have just spoken to them. It appears a 21-bed unit is about to close, which will have catastrophic implications for the elderly patients in the hospital. There are two reasons for this. The consultant geriatrician needs to be reappointed immediately. The medical officer, whose position has been temporarily filled by locums, also needs to be reappointed. If that does not happen, this unit will have to close on Friday. This has happened only in the past 24 hours because somebody in the HSE did not realise the funding that was coming from South Tipperary General Hospital for the geriatrician post would no longer be in place and assumed that somebody else would solve it, but it has not been solved. This is what the nurses in St. Patrick's have told me in the past hour. They do not know where they will be working on Saturday. If this unit is closed, will they remain in some other unit in St. Patrick's? A number of the patients are over 90 and one is over 100.

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