Frank O'Rourke (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. The first thing we must do is put pay and conditions in place to retain our front-line staff, that is, the midwives and nurses who provide such a critical service every day. If the right pay and terms and conditions are in place, we can attract people back to work in Ireland, which we desperately need in this specialised field. It is important to identify that nurses and midwives are highly qualified and provide a very specialised skillset. In that regard, we need to ensure they are retained to work in this country in order to provide much-needed day-to-day services on the front line in our hospitals, which we all need to engage with at different times throughout our lives. It is very important that we focus in on the parameters and the terms and conditions, and that we work to put measures in place to alleviate their concerns and deal with their issues. Most importantly, we need to retain nurses with their wonderful skillset and to attract more people back.

Our spokesperson Deputy Donnelly wrote to the Minister on the area of DEXA scans. Currently there are hospitals in Dublin and Naas that cannot provide those services when there are people who need them on a day-to-day basis to monitor their condition and no alternative measure have been put in place for them in either public or private hospitals. The GPs are very concerned about the consequences of the lack of resources in a general context, as well as in this specialised area. It was only brought to my attention on Monday at my clinic in Naas that Naas Hospital has a very sophisticated MRI scanner but it only operates in the morning and cannot operate in the afternoon or evening because there are no staff to operate it. Meanwhile, the hospital is sending patients accompanied by nurses in an ambulance to a private hospital to get those MRI scans done. That is the consequence we are dealing with. It is important we put packages in place to keep front-line people.

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