Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for giving us the opportunity to speak on this important matter. Young boys and girls, when they choose to become a nurse, see it as more than a career. It is a vocation for them and they deserve fairness and respect. A payment of €100 for a young nurse when his or her work is so demanding is not fair. We hear stories that many of them have to choose between the bus fare or food. That is not right and we cannot allow it to continue. Other tradespeople, including plumbers, plasterers, mechanics and electricians, all get paid as apprentices. We see what student nurses have to go through, working with all the different health problems patients present with, including cancer, heart problems, respiratory problems and people who are broken up and mangled after an accident. It must be very traumatic for those young nurses to see people dying in their arms. They have to go home and keep all of that within themselves because confidentiality does not allow them to discuss their job or their work with family members or other people.

I am pleading with the Minister and the Government to ensure that fairness will apply. The €100 the Minister is thinking of giving student nurses is not adequate. He will have to stand up to the mark and pay these people for doing the very important work they are doing on our behalf, especially during the Covid crisis, and the sacrifices they are making and have made on behalf of each and every one of us. I ask the Minister to read the motion and not to go against it.

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