Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, am speaking in support of this motion. While there has been some movement, it was pitiful to see the nurses, or angels of mercy, as I called them here last week, out on the picket line where they did not want to be.

This matter is not all about pay. It is also about dignity, respect and safe conditions in the workplace. It is about having a reasonable modicum of support staff so nurses do not go home from work every evening stressed out of their minds and totally disregarded by the petulant, juvenile actions of the Minister for Health. He has no respect for them. He threatened to dock their pay if they went on strike. At the same time, consultants got €80 million to design a hole in the ground. I have just come back from there. The Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, knows well where it is because it is in her constituency, or very near to it, in Dublin.

Our nurses need to be respected. They are the staff at the front line who meet us after any incident when we go to hospital or when somebody has a heart attack or some other problem. They take the patient from the ambulance into care. I include triage nurses in accident and emergency departments. Right through the wards the nurses cover a broad spectrum, from the cradle to the grave. They work in delivery rooms delivering the wonderful new creations, the new babies, and they are the last in attendance when one's eyes are closed when one dies. They do everything in between. I could not say enough about them. I could not say enough to support them.

I have to declare an interest because I am married to a nurse. She is not acting as a nurse now. She nurses me most of the time but she was a nurse in her career. I declare an interest in case someone says I am being biased. I am not.

We all know about the disrespect with which nurses are treated. The Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, knows because she has a family, including grandchildren. She will know about the dysfunction in the HSE and Department of Health. The nurses see the waste every day of the week. In the wards, there are ward managers, floor managers, bed managers, linen managers, hygiene managers and food managers but nobody managing. Despite this, the nurses are trying to run the hospitals and to keep everything in order. A consultant might breeze in and out, certainly, but the front-line staff are present all the time. We have way too many layers of management and no one managing. When there was a matron, the place was clean, well-managed and well organised, without five people going around with flipcharts writing down the same thing about the patient and asking the same questions.

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