Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Tánaiste about the new nursing contract the Government is negotiating with the INMO. News has broken in the past 24 hours that not only is nursing one of the toughest jobs in society but now the Government wants to make it one of the most insecure. It is unbelievable. As it was, this was a modest pay offer to nurses but the Government seems to want to extract a pound of flesh to get them to vote for it. If the nurses and midwives decide to return to the picket line, which is a much more likely prospect thanks to the Government's shenanigans over the past while, they will get even support from members of the public when they see that what the Government tried to do to the nurses was introduce a Trojan horse of a contract to make their lives even more difficult than they were before the strike. We heard about International Women's Day. If the Government wants equality for women, it should pay the nurses. It should not just talk about education and so on. If it paid the nurses and closed the gender pay gap, that would be the best service it could do for women.

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