Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Nobody is suggesting that we should drift backwards; far from it. We are absolutely insisting that students nurses and midwives must be acknowledged and paid for the critical tasks they carry out. We are insisting in this year and in these times above all other times, as we face into a pandemic, that we recognise and reward the real work of student nurses and midwives. Those students are among those who have kept our under-resourced and understaffed hospital system afloat. Those are the facts.

It is ironic of the Taoiseach to advance as a reason for not paying student nurses and midwives an argument about the professionalisation of nursing. Professionalisation of nursing cannot result in the pauperisation of student nurses and midwives. I have read their testimonies to the Taoiseach. Those are real, lived experiences and cannot simply be ignored, particularly this year, when the Minister for Health and his predecessor, Deputy Simon Harris, made concrete promises that student nurses and midwives would be recognised, rewarded and paid. That needs to happen.

See this speech in context