David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann: notes:

— the trojan work and sacrifice of healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic;

— that there have been 28,912 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in healthcare workers, with nearly 400 infections in the last month in nurses and midwives alone;

— that healthcare workers, particularly frontline patient-facing staff, have been overworked since before the pandemic, and have reached a point of exhaustion beyond burnout;

— that there is significant evidence of waning vaccine protection after 6 months and that healthcare workers were mainly vaccinated with AstraZeneca nearly a year ago; and

— the need to ensure fair treatment, protection and support for healthcare workers as they face into yet another difficult winter, with added strain from chronic hospital overcrowding and emergency department overflows;

further notes that:

— the Department of Health has yet to publish or act on the independent review of clinical placement allowances for student nurses and student midwives, conducted by Sean McHugh (McHugh Review); and

— prolonged inaction on waiting lists and workplace disputes, including, but not limited to, pay, and particularly in terms of battling for personal protective equipment, air hygiene in the workspace, long hours, and constraints on in-sourcing and supporting staff, along with understaffing and underinvestment, have contributed significantly to low morale and moral injury in the health service; and

calls on the Government to:

— immediately begin offering a Covid-19 booster vaccine to healthcare workers and frontline staff;

— publish and act on the McHugh Review, and pay a fair allowance to student nurses and midwives for the work that they do;

— waive the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland registration and retention fees which are coming due;

— engage meaningfully and positively with health and social care trade unions in a spirit of generosity, to deliver recognition of their particular sacrifice during the Covid-19 pandemic;

— publish and implement a fully costed and timelined delivery plan to reach safe staffing levels with improved staff-to-patient ratios, realise the commitments of the framework on staffing and skill mix, and implement real measures which will retain our valued healthcare workers and provide higher quality and safer healthcare; and

— ramp up mental health supports for healthcare workers.

I am sharing time with colleagues. I am proud to be proposing the motion. I am calling on the Minister, first and foremost, to publish immediately the McHugh review on pay and allowances for student nurses and midwives. Whatever the decision of the Minister, the student nurses and midwives who were outside the gates of Leinster House earlier today deserve to know what is in the report.

I welcome the measures for fourth year interns announced through The Irish Timesbut the manner in which that was announced is disappointing to say the least. I have met representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, the Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA, and SIPTU, and they are all very angry and disappointed that there was no direct engagement with the Minister and the HSE regarding the McHugh report and the contents of the memorandum he intends to bring to the Cabinet. As usual with this Government, the information ends up in The Irish Times or elsewhere in the media before those who are affected by this hear about it. This is an industrial relations issue. It is a show of bad faith and it affects the student nurses and midwives who are part of the defence against Covid that the House discussed earlier but have been treated so badly.

From what I have read, I am concerned that there is no real detail regarding first, second and third year student nurses and midwives and their unpaid clinical placement. It seems that the emergency €1 payment will continue for a bit longer, but there is a need for more detail in respect of what exactly will be put in place on a permanent basis for those first, second and third year students. It has to be real and substantial because they have rent to pay and other living expenses just like everybody else and they need to be properly supported as they work in hospitals as part of their placement and in their training.

There is a responsibility on the Minister to ensure that all student nurses and midwives are paid a fair allowance. I call on him to act on this urgently, as actions speak louder than words. The issue of payments for student nurses is a litmus test for this Government's recognition of the contribution of those who worked in our healthcare system throughout the pandemic. I have met many of them, in fact, hundreds of them, over the course of the last number of months. What really concerns me is how undervalued they feel. I do not know if the Minister appreciates that or if he has engaged with them to the same level. It is really frightening, at a time when we know that we have to recruit and retain staff in our health service, that young people are coming through training, doing placements in hospitals and feeling so undervalued and under-appreciated to the point that many of them are telling me they will not stay - they will leave the first chance they get. My message to them is not to leave and to stay, because we need them in our public healthcare system. If the Minister is sending the same message to them, he needs to underpin it by taking firm and clear action.

I also want to ask the Minister about the recognition payment for front-line workers that we heard so much about. It was an issue that was brought up before the budget. The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste were talking about it. It was expanding by the day and the minute. Every time a Minister spoke, it was announced that more people would get it and more public sector workers would be covered. Those on the front line were certainly led to believe that something would happen. It did not happen before the budget. There was then an expectation that something would be announced in the budget. Of course, the budget came and went and there was no announcement of a recognition, bonus or payment. Since then, over the last number of weeks, I have not heard a peep from the Government. For all of the speculation, the talk and the mixed messages that came from some members of the Government, it is as if the issue fell of a cliff and nobody has heard about it since. That must be dealt with. The WRC has stated that the Minister and the Government needs to engage with it to resolve the issue.

My final point relates to safe staffing levels in our hospitals. It is an area of work that I want to support over the next while. I am engaging with healthcare trade unions, training bodies and others to ensure that my response in this area is fit for purpose. We must put in place the strongest and most robust policies and clearly think out how it is that we are going to recruit, train and retain more nurses, GPs, doctors and consultants. We must do that to ensure we have safe staffing levels. We do not have enough GPs, there are still far too many vacant consultant posts and there are many nurses who are telling me that they are going to leave the profession. We need a proper strategic workforce planning strategy that is underpinned by the need to train staff more and also to value them more and treat them better. We must tell them that the Irish public health service we want to build is going to be a world-class one and also one that we want them to come and work in. We must tell them that we value them and want them. That is the message they should hear from the Minister and the Government.

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