Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to speak on this motion. We all got an email recently from a nurse which gave us the devastating news that some student nurses have as little as €6 a week left to buy food. That is appalling. Indeed, fourth-year student nurse, Tara Nic Chormaic, who is 28, has stated that the hell of the hospitals has left the class of 2018 burnt out and disillusioned. In addition, the massively disproportionate ratio in the recruitment of administrative and management staff compared with nurses, at a rate of three to one, came to light recently. It is bedlam and disorganised dysfunction in the HSE. Young nurses go into their career with a desire to help and to care for people and it is not right for them to be treated like this, that is, put into the hell of the hospitals.

The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath is not listening. Where is the Minister for Health? He is probably out canvassing down the street with Colm O'Gorman or something to repeal the eighth amendment. He should look after the hospitals. South Tipperary and Limerick regional hospitals are two of the worst in the country for overcrowding. The pressure the front-line nurses there are under, as well as all the other doctors and front-line staff, is just devastating. We would be brought up for war crimes, as I said before, if it was in a war situation, with the mistreatment and abuse that the patients, elderly and young, are being put through.

I saw Deputy Kelly with his crocodile tears. He was part of the Government that destroyed their income and welfare and he wants to turn on the tap now. I would nearly want to give him a handkerchief to stop him from crying, with such tears for the nurses. He did not care about them and walked over them.

I seek assurances from the Minister of State, as I have stated already today, that the patients in the assessment unit in St. Patrick's Hospital, Cashel will be looked after. I met one of them last week who came into her 101st year last Sunday and now they are being left in a limbo situation. The HSE says nothing is happening there. It is a fact that they cannot get a doctor. We had an excellent doctor there for years, Dr. Willie Ryan, and we need to get a doctor there to have certainty for that fabulous unit in Tipperary.

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