Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste has again spoken about the extraordinary work being done by our student nurses and indeed by our public health workers across the board and I agree with him. He talks about pay rises but the core of this issue is that student nurses do not get paid for their work. The Tánaiste talks about supervised work as if this is all normal times. This is not normal times. Doctors, consultants and care assistants can see what student nurses are doing. They have stepped up and into the breach and have put themselves and their families at risk. They are on the front line. They are our heroes, the Tánaiste's Government believes they should not be paid for their work. This is something that the Government should not be standing over. The public is angry at this because many people believed that our front-line workers were being paid and rightly so. The penny has dropped and it is now the case that this Government does not value the work that these student nurses are doing in the first number of years.

While the Tánaiste speaks of reviews, what is needed here is a commitment, one that was given by the previous Minister for Health and is now broken by this Government, which was that student nurses will be paid. Can the Tánaiste stand up and defend the position while those who are working in our hospitals as we speak-----

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