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

We are 18 months into the pandemic and it is just under a year since People Before Profit brought the first motion to the Dáil calling for payments to student nurses and midwives because of the incredible work they have done on placement during Covid-19 especially but which they do all the time.

The Government must get this. This is not just about what student nurses and midwives do on placement during the pandemic, although the pandemic highlighted the extent to which they work and help knit together our chronically understaffed and under-resourced health services. The Government had to recognise it with the healthcare assistant rate it provided at the beginning of the pandemic but then it pulled it back. After that they were given an insulting €100 per week. The unions still have not seen the detail of the review that followed, although we are told fourth years will get a bit of a pay increase because they put pressure on the Government, but there will only be a miserable €100 for student nurses and midwives.

This is just not good enough and I am amazed the Minister does not understand it. I spoke to student nurses and midwives at meetings and the demonstration when we were putting together this motion last year. Talking to them, they tell us something very simple. The experience they have as a student means they will probably leave the country. They cannot afford to pay the rent. The €100 is barely covering travel and subsistence costs when they are on placement, if it covers it at all. They cannot work when they are on placement, although they need a job and income to pay the rent. Many of these student nurses have kids and they cannot live on the pittance they are being given.

In Britain they used to pay £15,000 per year to student nurses and midwives. When they withdrew that payment, the number of people going into nursing collapsed. Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Tory that he is, had to bring in a bursary of £10,000 for student nurses and midwives to get more people into nursing. The Government is nowhere near what is necessary to keep nurses and midwives in this country and our health service or stop them from emigrating.

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