Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the issue of the nurses' strike. I find it very hard to understand the Taoiseach's thinking. What is his strategy, or does he have any strategy at all for resolving this issue? Sometimes I think it is more about being seen to be tough than playing his part as leader of this country in dealing with a very serious and pressing issue. The question must be asked whether the Taoiseach actually wants a solution. If so, what action, if any, is he taking to achieve one? The Government has been engaging in a campaign of consistently denying the seriousness of the shortage of nurses in the health service. It has also sought to misrepresent the case being made. At no stage did the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, lodge a pay claim of 12%, or of any other percentage for that matter. Could the Taoiseach please stop saying that? The INMO has not lodged a pay claim so I call on him to stop misrepresenting the situation.

The nurses state that they want to engage with the Government on a number of key issues relating to the future of the health service. They want to engage in respect of the significant problems relating to recruitment and retention and the implications of these for the health service as it operates currently. They want to engage in respect of the fact that there is now only one applicant for every four vacancies in nursing. How do we address that? They want to engage in respect of the fact that the health service is spending over €100 million per year on agency nurses. There is no sense to that whatsoever. Not only are there major problems regarding the cost of that, there are also various issues in terms of a lack of consistency, a lack of stable teams in hospitals and so on. Agency nursing, apart from being expensive, is not a solution. The nurses also want to engage in respect of the fact that the HSE has an expensive unit which is supposed to recruit nurses from all over the world but which has not been very successful in its efforts. There have been a couple of expensive and long-running campaigns aimed at trying to bring Irish nurses back home. However, those nurses have not be available to return.

That there is an issue in the context of pay parity cannot be denied. There is also a point about graduate pay. The Taoiseach cannot defend the fact that there is a €7,000 gap in pay in circumstances where nurses are required to have the same academic qualifications as allied health professionals. Does he accept that this is a genuine issue which has not been resolved or addressed over many years and which must be contemplated in the context of any attempt to tackle the difficulty we face?

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