John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over the past 20 months or thereabouts, countless student nurses and midwives were sent into harm's way, alongside all our front-line workers, to fight the pandemic that came to our shores. There have been almost 29,000 Covid cases among healthcare workers and a large number made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their communities. My family and I have felt the full impact of this. My daughter, who is a student nurse, contracted Covid while on placement and brought it into our home, which wreaked devastation throughout the household. My father-in-law, her grandfather, ended up in ICU and it was only due to the heroic action of healthcare workers in St. Vincent's University Hospital that his life was saved, for which we are eternally grateful.

Every country in the world wants to hire Irish nurses, yet the Minister seems to be doing his best to give them a one-way ticket abroad and push them towards a life of eternal servitude in foreign lands. Many of them are left wondering why they are deemed priceless yet forced to remain penniless. In what can only be described as a cynical attempt to deflect from the Government's indifference to the welfare of student nurses and midwives, the Minister offered them a paltry €100 earlier this year. He also agreed to a more long-term review of payments to student nurses on clinical placement, which was to be led by Sean McHugh. Those recommendations were to go to the Minister in June, in the hope that they would be in place for the current academic year. However, the report has been sitting on his desk since 12 August and only parts of it have been seen by a select few journalists, not by those who made contributions to, and took part in, the review.

The Minister must publish that report immediately. He needs to pay a fair allowance to student nurses and midwives for the work they do. When he says he is not going to oppose this motion, that does not mean he should do nothing; it means he must implement the contents of the report. He has been found out and he will continue to be found out if he persists in sitting on his hands and failing our health service and our student nurses and midwives.

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