Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy and everyone else knows that there have been ongoing discussions about this issue between the INMO and the Minister over the past number of weeks. Those discussions are continuing and will result in a review before the end of December on the allowances applying to student nurses.

I am trying to say to the Deputy that the days are over for saying it is all right for student nurses to be given the menial tasks, or whatever tasks, while they are supposed to be learning and going through an educational programme. An expensive infrastructure has been put in place in hospitals across the length and breadth of the country to protect the learning environment. We need to face up to that. It needs to be protected and it is wrong to exploit it. Any nurse who works and is asked to do certain tasks on particular rosters should be paid, but they should not be asked to do it in the first instance. That is the point. Why do we have preceptors, clinical nurse placement officers and second level clinical nurse managers, CNM2? Those management positions were created specifically to look after the degree programme in clinical placement. That is what I mean by the professionalisation of health education, to move away from where it was.

Nurse education and nursing have advanced a lot. I say again that there should be no exploitation of any student nurse in any hospital setting. It will not be accepted and that has been made clear to the HSE and to all and sundry. That is an important point that the Deputy is ignoring. She is playing politics and that is fine. I understand what she was at last week by tabling a motion, putting up the dashboard, going on social media and saying that the Government does not want to pay these students but Sinn Féin does. That is overly simplistic and the Deputy knows it. Public service pay and issues relating to education programmes of this kind were never dealt with via one simplistic motion in Dáil Éireann. The Deputy knows that as well as anybody else and it is time now to be honest about it too, in terms of how it is presented as a story.

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