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

I will share time with Deputies Cullinane and Funchion. I listened with more than a wee smile on my face and a bit of amusement to Fianna Fáil telling us that nurses do not normally go on strike. In truth, the last time that Fianna Fáil was in government, it introduced the recruitment moratorium and there were nurses' strikes in Sligo University Hospital, University Hospital Limerick and Beaumont Hospital. A national strike is unusual and it should not have taken a national strike to bring the Government to the table but when the Government went to the table, a recommendation could be made from the Labour Court. It was not lost on nurses and midwives on the picket line that they were out for improvements in their pay to ensure that they could meaningfully address the recruitment and retention crisis and all the while, we have the lads here - and it is mostly lads - with the attitude of what is €1 billion between friends and let us keep the confidence and supply arrangement going. It is not lost on those nurses and midwives that money can be found for a catastrophic overspend in the hospital and it cannot be found for the vital personnel who will work in it. Doubts have been expressed by healthcare professionals and medics over whether there will be sufficient numbers to staff the hospital, should it be built. That is another concern.

The recommendation from the Labour Court is under consideration at the moment. I recall that when I worked as a trade union official I rarely, if ever, thanked politicians for interfering in the minutiae of industrial relations on the basis that there are processes and procedures and they are going through that at the moment. My understanding is that the executive of the INMO will consider it and it will go out to its membership for ballot. They, and only they, will decide on this. We hear that the Government has accepted it and that is fine but it is up to the nurses and midwives themselves to judge what has been recommended by the Labour Court and to apply a test on whether this meets their demands and whether this will meaningfully address the recruitment and retention crisis. They will cast their ballot on that basis alone. We will have to respect that, and we have to respect that process. I have heard Members eulogise nurses but they are the same people who were happy to cut their pay and so on. Nurses are not angels or saints and it is not a vocation. They are workers, they had an industrial dispute, they brought their employer to the table, and now they have a recommendation and they will consider that. We should allow that process to take place and allow those people to deliberate because that is their right. Anyone who was on the march on Saturday will say that there is great public support for them and that was not lost on the Government either. I do not believe that the Government went to the table willingly; I believe it was forced to the table, in part because of the support that was out there for nurses and midwives.

The Government is heading down the same road again with paramedics because that is also a group held in much esteem by the people. People do not want to see paramedics out on strike for a silly reason. Three unions are recognised within the health sector to represent paramedics. It is not as if it is a single union environment and it is not as if unions from outside and inside the ICTU do not have procedures and mechanisms in place to ensure that people are represented by the trade union of their choice. I have read a letter sent by Peter Hughes of the PNA in which he appeals to us to demand that the HSE, even at this late stage, engages through the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. That letter is to the same people who were extolling the virtues of the third party processes. The Government should engage with these people and avoid the dispute.

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