David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will finish where I started my first contribution by again reading to the Minister some of the first-hand testimonies I have received. When I read them out I want him to bear in mind that I have spoken to hundreds of student nurses and midwives directly.

I am not sure how many the Minister has spoken to. The following are some of these accounts and the first reads:

In three weeks, I will find myself yet again in a ward rampant with Covid and severely understaffed for nothing. I left a paid job because I could not put my children at risk of having no one to take care of them if I got sick and now I am being asked to do so for €3 a week. Micheál Martin wants to talk about real work and how we should pull up anyone expecting us to do anything on our own. Well, as you already know, the healthcare system would be even more on its knees without the free work of student nurses and it is not fair.

A second contribution reads:

We are highly insulted by the proposed €100 weekly payment that has been proposed as payment for our time on placement. As we work 31 hours per week this payment equates the value of our work as being worth €3.22 an hour. It only adds further insult to injury. This does not equate adequate pay for adequate work.

A third student said:

It is important to progress as a country in order to keep the already lack of healthcare staff we have from becoming an even more critical crisis. Most of the people I know are refusing to stay in this State once they are qualified, which means once the nurses who are working now retire, most of the younger generation of nurses will have no choice but to leave if we are not treated fairly.

The final contribution was a plea from someone who said:

I love my job. I always have and I always will. I love being there for people during those dark and difficult times in their lives. I love being able to care for and to look after the sick and frightened people. It is a blessing and I feel privileged. It truly shocks me how our Government and our Minister for Health still think it is acceptable to deprive an adequate allowance and a fair wage for those interns, and those first, second, and third years.

That is what I am hearing first hand from student nurses and midwives.

A previous Taoiseach and a previous Minister for Health once described the Department of Health as Angola. It has always been seen by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as a poisoned chalice. The reason for that is that none of them are interested in building a world-class public health service, a free and equal health service so that people can be treated fair and equally, a national health service. I have a message for the Minister. I do not see the health service as Angola or as a poisoned chalice. I see it as a unique opportunity to transform healthcare in this State and to build a much better, decent, world-class and egalitarian health service. If the Minister and the parties in government are not in the business of building that health service or do not want to treat those on the front line with respect, then I ask them to move over and to leave it to somebody who does want to do that job.

I have already said to the Minister, and I say it again in speaking directly to all of those wonderful student nurses and midwives that I have spoken to who are hugely talented people, our country is in safe hands when one listens to what they are telling us of their experiences and what they want to do in our healthcare system. They will not be here to do it, however, if the Minister does not act. They will emigrate. Listen to this message and pay them. The Minister said he would support this motion. I ask him then to go further than that and to meet with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, with SIPTU and with others and resolve this issue now. With the stroke of a pen the Minister can do this. There should be no more excuses, hiding behind reports or talk. People want to see us act.

The Minister and his party have an opportunity today to deliver and to be the Minister for Health who speaks directly to those student nurses and midwives and tells them that they are respected, valued, wanted and paid fairly and reasonably for the work they do during their internships and placements.

See this speech in context