Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Seeing as how, as the Taoiseach suggested in a previous answer, the Government is not busy with any particular legislation at the moment, and given that he is responsible for co-ordinating the response to Covid, may I suggest something for his Department to do? There are many aspects to this, but one that is staring us in the face, is growing more evident every day and will be the key to any kind of return to normality is the need for more doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants to increase the capacity of our health service. On 20 October, the Taoiseach suggested that student nurses should have the pay they received in March and April returned to them, but the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, has not done so. I was shocked to discover at a meeting of student nurses that a huge obstacle to the recruitment of sufficient nurses and doctors is the level of fees they are being forced to pay. Legislation on this would be a good idea. Student nurses working on wards on the front line pay €3,000 in fees. Mature student nurses pay €7,500. Graduate-entry medical students who are training to be doctors, a group of whom I met recently, payi€15,000 per year in fees. All of them said they could barely hang on. There is an active financial disincentive to get the trained doctors, nurses and midwives that we need now more than ever. The Taoiseach should be doing something about this. It is crazy to put financial obstacles in the way of training the front-line healthcare professionals we need. This is putting them through the wringer financially in trying to complete their training.

See this speech in context