Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking to it now. We are being told that Deputy Cullinane is the greatest health Minister in waiting, so he is setting himself up for a major fall. If he cannot get through the past couple of hours with any consistency, I wonder how he will get through a term as a Minister for Health.

It is 11 months since Senator Annie Hoey of the Labour Party presented a Bill on student nurses' pay. Student nurses and student midwives have been among the lowest in terms of how they have been respected during this pandemic. There is no doubt about that, and that is why this motion is a good stand-alone motion. It speaks to that in a real way. We see the impact it is having from the surveys that have been done for student nurses. The motion refers to "beyond burnout". It is beyond burnout. Some 62% of respondents to the nurses and midwives survey have cared for patients who have died from Covid-19, 91% have felt mentally exhausted when off duty and 97% believe it has had a negative psychological impact on their colleagues. I have been in this House and in the convention centre for the past year and a half and have heard the moaning and cribbing of our colleagues about being housed in a world-class convention centre. Compared to what real workers are doing on the front line of this pandemic, it is embarrassing. It has been embarrassing to be a politician at this time. We are clapping at a time student nurses are not getting paid.

I welcome what the Minister said about the McHugh review, but it is too late. It has been on his desk for a number of months. Everything has taken far too long. The student nurses and midwives who gathered outside the Dáil today are exasperated and exhausted. This is not the first time they have been outside the Dáil. They do not want to be there. They want to be either studying or learning their craft, and they have not been able to do that with the respect that they deserve. That has been a huge regret of this pandemic. We cannot ignore the fact that two thirds of nurses and midwives tell us that they are considering leaving the profession due to the impact of Covid-19. Yesterday, we saw on the television news people arriving through the arrivals gate of Sydney airport. We know what is going to happen if we do not improve the terms and working conditions of healthcare workers, be they nurses, midwives, radiographers or social care workers. They will be going through those arrival halls next year to better paid jobs, career diversity and progression and a quality of life they are not getting here.

These are the fundamentals, and this predates Covid-19. That is just Australia. There are also the Emirates, which are providing large, tax-free wages for these workers. They can go there to work for three or four years and then return. The UK is a more attractive option. Ireland should be the most attractive place for any healthcare worker to work in but, unfortunately, it is the opposite. We have seen what our healthcare workers can do. Ireland is a world leader in its vaccination roll-out. The healthcare workers have been doing that. It is nurses, student nurses, retired nurses and everybody in between who have been vaccinating us and keeping us as safe as possible. There is a fundamental problem that this Government and any future Government will have to tackle.

Regarding the booster vaccine, today's announcement that it will be rolled out is welcome. Again, however, it is weeks too late. Why did NIAC take so long? The science is there. The Minister and I have spoken to clinicians; every spokesperson and Member has been speaking to clinicians and scientists about the efficacy of vaccines. With 3,500 healthcare workers out sick, the fact that it has taken until 2 November to announce that the booster campaign for healthcare workers is going to continue is frankly unacceptable. We will also have a situation where vaccinators are going to return to facilities such as nursing homes to administer the booster shots, the same facilities they visited in previous weeks to administer it to people over 80 years old and so forth. It is an inefficiency we could have done without.

On the stand-alone motion and the need to show respect to the student workers who were outside the House on this cold November day, it deserves support and implementation.

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