Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As I have said to the Taoiseach many times, an important component of developing co-operation on the island and, ultimately, achieving what many of us hope to achieve, the ending of partition and a united Ireland, is having a quality all-Ireland national health service with the capacity to deliver for people. We have to learn the best lessons from one another and address the deficiencies in different parts of the health service. One positive lesson we can take from the North relates to the recent decision to pay front-line healthcare workers a £500 bonus. For all the applause healthcare workers got down here, they did not get any reward. As I have mentioned, while student nurses in the UK's National Health Service get a bursary of £10,000, we expect them to work for effectively nothing while on placement. Front-line workers in the North are getting £500 as a reward.

I have highlighted a number of areas, such as the area of psychology, in which those trying to learn must pay excessive fees and, in many cases, receive no funding whatsoever when undertaking postgraduate courses. In the UK's National Health Service, PhDs and doctorates in areas such as psychology are funded in order to incentivise people to move into those areas. Should we not take the best lessons in order to move towards the sort of quality national health service we need?

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