Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I met a large number of protestors today outside the Dáil and spoke to them about what is happening in the nursing sector, which is absolutely shocking. We in Aontú were one of the first political parties to bring to a discussion the matter of student nurses being properly paid. It is also interesting that the Minister at the time, Deputy Harris, said he would pay them and then reneged on that promise. Now they are being offered a quarter of the minimum wage to work on the front line in very difficult circumstances.

There is also much information coming from today's protest. One point is that there is currently a crisis in the sustainability of nursing in this State. An Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, survey has stated 68% of nurses are considering getting out of the profession as a consequence of the conditions and because of Covid-19. I also understand there are fewer people coming from college into the service than are leaving at the other end. We are getting to a position where we will see a reduction in the numbers of nurses available to fill those jobs.

It reminds me that in education we have concepts such as teacher-student ratios but there are no such ratios for nurses to patients. I remember reading a document a couple of years ago indicating that the more patients a nurse has to deal with, the higher the level of morbidity and mortality in the ward in the question. There is a direct correlation between the number of patients and nurses on a ward. That document was released when Deputy Harris was Minister for Health, which demonstrates the pressure being put on nurses. Their ability to function in that environment is a life and death matter.

I spoke to a large number of student nurses today, including Caitríona, Sonia, Miriam and Mairéad. One of them spoke about how an older man fell in a nursing home, and because he had Covid-19, other staff did not want to pick him up. She told me how she had to pick him from the floor and was the only person willing to do it. Another student nurse told me she had never been present at a death in her life, but when she was a student nurse, she found herself on her own when four people passed away. She was thrown into one of the most difficult and traumatic experiences a person could have, on her own and without anybody to guide her in dealing with that.

I spoke to a number of other individuals, including a lady I will call Mary. She was a nurse manager in a nursing home in the west of the country. In a famous case, all but two of her staff tested positive for the virus one morning. She rang the HSE seeking staff to support her but she did not receive any extra staff for two days. In those two days, the two staff worked for 48 hours on adrenaline. I touched base with Mary months later to see how she was doing and she broke down on the phone. Through tears, she told me she just does not want to do nursing anymore.

My office has also spoken to the whistleblower at St. Mary's nursing home in the Phoenix Park. It was a short conversation because a patient had just had a stroke and an ambulance had been called. She told me she was broken-hearted about what she had witnessed. The next time people are speaking to nurses, midwives or student nurses, they might ask when they last had a holiday or a lunch break.

We need to do better on this issue if we are to have a health service that functions in the future, and to do right by the workers in that sector. They are entitled to a decent working environment.

I refer to the nurses in Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, who were out in force at a march this week in Navan. Some 10,000 people took to the streets in what was a cross-community cross-party rally. I note one political party did not put forward a Deputy to attend, which was Fine Gael. The Minister of State, Deputy Damien English, did not arrive to speak at the rally unfortunately, and that was a major mistake. At present, beds in the accident and emergency department and the ICU are being closed by the HSE at a time when ICU beds are at the front line of the battle against Covid. It is mind-blowing that we are listening to the rhetoric about the need for ICU capacity while at the same time the HSE is looking to close beds. There has been a stay of execution on this, which we welcome. However, it is not good enough that it remains open for just three or four months. I will wrap up with this point: people are waiting 11 hours for ICU and accident and emergency services in Drogheda, yet the Government is looking to close accident and emergency services in Navan. It is important that the Minister of State sends a message to the HSE that this cannot be done. We must keep our accident and emergency services.

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