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

Our ability to reopen society to cope with Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 healthcare is critically dependent on our intensive care unit capacity which, before Covid-19 and still, remains chronically under-resourced, understaffed, and about half of the capacity of the EU average per 100,000 population. I had an eye-opener in respect of the failure of the Government to address this problem when an ICU nurse came into my clinic this week. She has been offered a job in a Dublin hospital as an ICU nurse, but she is on a Stamp 1 visa and needs a Stamp 4 visa. She went to get an appointment at the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, INIS, to get her Stamp 4 visa. She was told that she could not get an appointment until December, in which case she will lose the job and we will be down one ICU nurse. That is, in effect, one ICU bed. That backlog is unacceptable. It shows a lack of focus in ensuring that we get ICU nurses where they are available. I ask the Taoiseach to look into the case, about which I have written to the Ministers for Health and for Justice.

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