Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Saturday's march with 50,000 nurses, midwives, paramedics and their supporters in all sorts of different jobs and trade unions - a sea of INMO blue coming down O'Connell Street - was a striking demonstration of the power and solidarity of working-class people. Coming on top of three days of very effective strike action, it no doubt struck fear into the heart of the Government and brought it to the negotiating table over the weekend. The proposals on pay that the Government had ruled out quickly became possible.

The fear of workers being organised in effective unions is the reason the HSE, clearly under the instruction of the Government, refuses to recognise the union of choice of more than 500 paramedics, NASRA. There is a lesson there for all public sector workers and indeed all private sector workers. Getting organised and taking action can win concessions. However, it seems that the Government was not listening properly. Those who were striking and marching were demanding pay parity and an end to the recruitment and retention crisis. However, the Government is trying to get away with offering significantly less than that. It is no wonder there is significant discussion and disagreement from below with the Government's offer at this stage.

As we all know Fianna Fáil gutted the health service. It claims it is not for the Dáil to tell nurses what to do and we agree. Fianna Fáil's amendment to the motion precisely tells the nurses what to do, referring to the Labour Court recommendation in glowing terms. However, it is for the Dáil to tell the Government what it should do, which is what our motion does. Our motion finishes by calling on the Government to recognise NASRA and to pay the nurses' pay demands in full.

However, if the nurses and midwives reject the offer because it does not deliver the pay parity they were fighting for, we will support them as will the public, and we will be calling on other sections of the trade union movement to support them again. That power will be seen once more and can extract more concessions.

It is suggested that there is a problem with money in the health service. It is seen in the Labour Court recommendation where at a maximum cost of €35 million the nurses are meant to pay for their own small step towards pay parity through productivity. However, there is plenty of money in the health service. It is in what is a for-profit health industry. Denis O'Brien owns the Beacon Hospital whose profits rose by 27% to €8 million in 2017. The profits of the Blackrock Clinic, part owned by Larry Goodman, rose by 10% to more than €12 million in 2012. Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, a company with profits of over $12 billion globally in 2017, tried to decimate the pension rights of its workers in Cork. It is owned incidentally by Monsanto of Agent Orange infamy. It is a rogues' gallery of those who profit from illness and from the privatisation of our health services. The problem is not a lack of resources and money; the problem is with how they are organised increasingly on a for-profit and private basis. The same is true right across society.

There is plenty of money to pay the nurses. The question relates to who currently owns and controls it, and how that money is used. Let us consider the €270 million paid before Christmas to the junior Anglo Irish Bank bondholders, which is more than enough to pay the nurses claim in full. Let us consider the €14.3 billion in the Apple tax account where the Government is spending money so that Apple can get it back. Let us consider the €29 billion held by the richest three people.

The Government's response is that it has to make difficult choices and that it cannot just choose to pay the nurses but that illustrates the madness of its policies and systems from the point of view of the majority. We agree that choices need to be made but we do not agree that they are difficult choices. They are easy choices and from the point of view of working class people and society as a whole, it is very easy to say that we should pay nurses and not Anglo junior bondholders, that Pfizer should not be able to cut workers' pensions while making super profits and that private insurance companies should not be able to profit off the back of an underfunded health service. Making those easy choices means undertaking the difficult task of transforming our society, turning it on its head and taking on the power of the major companies that profit from illness and the underfunding of the health services and which own the major sources of wealth. It involves deciding that they should be in public ownership and building a socialist society where they are used for the benefit of the majority. A crucial part of such a society where resources are used for the benefit of the majority is building a properly funded national health service whose workers are respected in terms of union recognition, pay and working conditions.

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