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

The following is a message from a student nurse:

I myself am a student nurse working 39hours on placement for free and having to work 2 days on top of this to earn money and i am honestly burnt out. Most student are doing over 60hors a week. It is costing 9euro a day in parking alone without including petrol and lunches. To add even more to this disappointment, I am yet to receive the thousand-euro nurses' bonus promised to us in June. something needs to change to help our health system and it is not for the lack of nurses training, it is the treatment we receive that people leave Ireland seeking better conditions.

She particularly asked, as do her colleagues, what has happened to the recommendations for an enhanced reimbursement scheme for student nurses arising out of the McHugh report and other recommendations, including the provision of uniforms and a payment for the cost of laundering uniforms and so on. It must be remembered that we have record numbers on trolleys. We have the highest number of patients on trolleys on record for this month of November. When we treat our student nurses in this way, is it any wonder we cannot get the staff we need in the health service?

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