Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister missed an important point in the PSSA which was also in other agreements, including the one on which Fianna Fáil reneged. The point is that the parties reserve the right to go back to the table and renegotiate if the circumstances change. When I was "back in my twos", as my dad would say, when circumstances changed we were quickly dragged back to the table in order that there would be negotiations on the subject of pay cuts.

Circumstances have now changed and we face a recruitment and retention crisis. All of our talk about Sláintecare, reform and everything else will come to nothing unless we have the staff to deliver. Nurses and midwives are the single biggest cohort in our health service. Other trade unions aside from the INMO now call for a renegotiation of that agreement, just as Fianna Fáil did when it felt the circumstances were right for another agreement. There is scope, therefore, to renegotiate, and I would like to hear something more positive from the Minister about nurses' and midwives' pay. We passed a resolution here where we all agreed pay had to be central, not for a small group, a section or a single cohort but for all nurses and midwives.

See this speech in context