Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy very much for raising this important issue. From my time working in the public health service and as Minister for Health, I am very aware of the contribution student nurses and midwives make to the health service. I am also aware of the limitations regarding what a student can do and provide in the health service, whether it is a therapy student, a nursing student, a medical student or any other student.

There has been a lot of debate on this issue in the past week or so but there have not been as many facts as there ought to have been, so let me set out five facts of which we ought to be aware. The motion in the Dáil last week was party politics. It was non-binding. It was unfunded. If it had passed, it would not have been worth a single euro to a single student nurse. It was designed to make the Government look bad, the Opposition look good and do nothing at all for student nurses. Public pay is not voted on in the Dáil, ever. Public pay is negotiated between the Government and trade unions and negotiations are now under way on the next pay deal.

Student nurses are paid for their fourth year, for 32 weeks, and they are counted as part of the staff. In the first wave of the pandemic, with the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and I, as Taoiseach, took a decision to take on student nurses in the early years of their course as healthcare assistants. We did so because we thought the hospitals might be overwhelmed on foot of the surge we were anticipating. Thankfully, that surge never happened, but it was still the right decision to take them on as healthcare assistants. That was only ever supposed to be on a temporary basis and we said so at the time. We have provided the pandemic unemployment payment to student nurses who worked as healthcare assistants in nursing homes and who had to give up those jobs because we asked them not to be in two clinical settings. The pandemic unemployment payment is being paid.

Student nurses who are in years 1, 2 and 3, like all other students on degree courses, are not paid. They spend a lot of time in lectures, laboratories and libraries and on supervised work experience or placements. When one pursues a degree course, it is not the norm to be paid for that. This is a degree course now; it is not an apprenticeship or a cadetship. That is a very different and older model. We decided we wanted to move away from that model 20 years ago after the Commission on Nursing reported. However, I do think that student nurses should be paid where they are acting up, filling in for staff nurses or doing the work of staff nurses because wards or clinical areas are understaffed. That does happen in education, for example, where students are doing the higher diploma in education, HDip. Student teachers do not get paid for their work experience, but they are sometimes paid when they supervise or take over for a teacher who is absent. In those circumstances, it is right that student nurses should be paid for the work they do. That includes those in first, second and third year.

This is an issue on which the Government is engaging and we want to continue to engage on it. We will speak to the INMO and SIPTU's health division about this. As Deputy Doherty stated, a review of allowances is under way. As is always the case, matters of public pay will be negotiated between the Government, on the one hand, and the unions, on the other. That is how it is done. That is how we all want it to be done. It is the best way to do it. It is not based on a motion in the Dáil. That is just pure politics.

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