Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In March, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, made a promise to student nurses and midwives. Now he is in the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, but he still has influence in this regard. Let us call a spade a spade: when he made that promise, it was nothing but a PR stunt. It was incredible to see that following the announcement, the Minister was trending on Twitter because hundreds, if not thousands, of students were delighted that he had made this promise. What has happened is that the Minister has reneged on the promise. Student nurses were offered employment by the HSE and if they took that employment they were no longer considered student nurses. They were employed directly by the HSE and their work would not count towards their placement hours. The Minister, Deputy Harris, sought to pull the wool over those students' eyes. It was cheap for any Minister to promise to pay someone, especially anyone working on the front lines in some of the most difficult conditions in the State in the middle of a pandemic, and then to renege on that. It was tight-fisted and disgraceful. It was allowed to happen. It might be advisable for Twitter to fact-check the tweets that the Minister, Deputy Harris, puts out because there is no veracity there now.

We need to do right by those students. People who do a hard day's work demand and deserve a fair wage. The standards of the Oireachtas and in this State should be based on decent workers' rights, where a worker who puts in the hard yards is properly paid. If we do not have that standard for students and workers in the health service, we do not deserve that standard ourselves.

The second important issue, which any Minister with a little foresight should recognise, is that one of the key threats to our health service in the last 20 years has been our inability to retain key healthcare workers. It stands to reason that if one treats workers wrong - if they are stiffed on the proper income to which they are entitled - they will find a market or location that will value the work they do and they will move there. As a result, the State will find them very difficult to replace. Over the years, the loss of these key workers has meant the workload on the remaining nurses has become more difficult which in itself drives people out of work.

I ask the House to contrast the radical difference in treatment by the Irish and Scottish Governments. The Scottish Government recognises the work that nurses have done and is giving them a £500 bonus. The Irish Government goes on Twitter, virtue signals, stands up in the Dáil and applauds their work, and then demands €100 from them to retain their jobs for this year. The fact that the €100 is for retention should set alarm bells off in the Government. The Minister should do right by the student nurses and midwives and by the nurses and staff we have now.

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