Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The medical scientists will forgive me if I do not waste my four minutes thanking them. I stand in solidarity with them. I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for tabling this motion. I am not sure how the Minister could not agree with it. It is the most basic motion that I have ever seen and makes three calls:

— ensure that DPER and the HSE agree to the long-standing pay parity award...

— begin a recruitment campaign...

— publish a plan.

Instead, we have a response from the Minister about “hidden heroes”. Medical scientists are not hidden to me, the rest of the Opposition or the hospital staff. They are certainly not hidden to the public who rely on them, including me, who gets her blood tested like everyone else. This is not to mention the 200,000 Covid tests that were carried out last year in Galway hospital alone. They are not “hidden heroes”. They are hard-working medical scientists who are asking for equality and pay parity. That is it.

The Minister’s speech should have dealt with the background to this. It contained a heading entitled “Background”, and I was full of hope that he would give us the background, analyse what had happened and tell us what he was going to do. Instead, there was nothing.

I have a report in front of me. It has 112 paragraphs and 64 difficult recommendations written by three men. Unfortunately, they did not number the recommendations 1, 2, 3, etc.

Notwithstanding that, the recommendations are clear when reading through it. It is now time. In May 1997, the Labour Relations Commission recommended the establishment of an expert group. That expert group was set up in 1997 following long delays since 1981, when all of these problems emerged. We then go forward to this report, in which the expert group actually apologises for its delay in producing it. I do not know why but it apologises for the length of time it took. There was more delay before we got this report in 2001. To add more confusion, within the report it is said that some of the recommendations should be implemented by 1 April 2000. The report was published in February 2001 but obviously there were interim reports and contact with the Department. Perhaps the date of 1 April 2000 is the hint that nobody was serious about this. Some of these recommendations were to be implemented by 1 April 2000 but that did not happen.

Let us fast-forward to more than 21 years later. We are all expected to grow up at 21 years of age. It is the age of maturity. What have we got? We have an answer that is positively insulting. I say that with the greatest respect for the Minister's role and not in any personal way. We cannot go on like this. The Minister must look at this report. What happened? Were any of those recommendations implemented? If so, will the Minister tell us? If not, will he tell us why not? Why was there no review between then and now? Why do medical scientists, whom I want to thank, have to give us all of this information and tell us how difficult it is to go on strike, which they do most reluctantly? Why does that have to happen? It raises the question of whether the structure in the Government is fit for purpose. In my opinion, it certainly is not. The Government has had any number of warnings that this was going to happen. I spent ten years of my life on a health forum and I watched the medical science laboratories being run down and their services being outsourced to private for-profit companies. While the medical scientists and all of their colleagues appealed for this not to be done, each Government, following the lead of the Progressive Democrats, said "No" and that privatisation was the way forward. We then had the scandal of the cervical smear tests. We have learned nothing.

The Minister should be telling us why the report has not been implemented, what needs to be done and what we are going to do to stop outsourcing and to recognise the fundamental role of medical scientists so that we can rely on them for their honesty, courage and hard work. I want to rely on them and I do. I certainly will not rely on the Government, unless it is going to change.

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