Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Solidarity-People Before Profit on bringing forward this motion. It is scandalous that student nurses are not paid at the best of times. It is even more outrageous in the middle of a global pandemic. These student nurses have been central to our front-line response to this pandemic but have been left in financial hardship by the Government. Many students nurses from Galway have contacted me telling me how hard they have had it. One woman told me:

I have done 15 weeks unpaid placement each year. This consists of three 12-hour shifts each week, a total of 36 hours a week. The weeks when I have been on placement were extremely difficult. As the placement is unpaid, I also worked in the hospital at the weekends as a HCA through an agency. The shifts at the weekends were also 12 hours and some weeks I would work 60 hours in the hospital only to be getting paid at the weekends as a HCA.

The only time these students receive any financial support is when they work outside of the area that their college is in. That consists of €50 year a week to cover accommodation. One would not get accommodation with that in many places. For many, that does not even cover the cost of transport, let alone accommodation. One woman told me the best accommodation she could get beside her placement was for €85 a night. This is not even paid weekly but paid weeks later. It is only available if one travels a certain distance from college. Accordingly, in many cases students have been forced to commute from home due to Covid-19 and they receive nothing as this their placement is near the college.

Another nurse told me:

While in my third year, I had placements in Roscommon. The €50 a week did not even cover my train ticket - the bus would not get me there on time. I was getting up at 5.30 every morning because I could not stay up there.

The pandemic means that many student nurses cannot work their part-time job because of the risk of infection. How can they support themselves if they have no income? Some of them have children. How are they supposed to support their families? This is having an untold impact on their health. One woman told me:

Each time I have been put on clinical placement, I have been forced to work 54-hour weeks, 32 hours unpaid on a placement in the hospital and 22 hours in my weekend job. I cannot explain how many times I have considered dropping out because I cannot handle the financial stress.

The Minister of State needs to act urgently.

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