Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have a mode and a format for engagement with the nursing unions, which is the oversight committee of the Public Service Stability Agreement. Officials from my Department are key participants within the committee. Through that we have the opportunity to engage directly, for example, with the nursing unions, on any issue that pertains to the Public Service Stability Agreement.

I again emphasise the respect I have for the work our nurses and midwives do in our hospitals throughout the country. Alongside that respect for them, I emphasise the economic consequences that would flow from the issues they are raising. A 12% pay increase alone would cost the health services €300 million. If the health service were to meet the demand for an additional two hours of continuous professional development per individual per week, it would remove approximately 3.5 million nursing hours from our public health service.

The cost of that alone would be €127 million. Those are the costs for the health service alone. From all the experience we have had of collective agreements over many years, the reality is that meeting those concessions would trigger equivalent demands across the entire public service and Civil Service, which would cause difficulty in terms of our ability to run public pay in an affordable way and be able to hire more nurses and doctors in the future.

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