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

One of the features of our shared island is the demoralisation of nurses, midwives and other healthcare workers both North and South. Tomorrow, there will be further strike action by nurses in the North over a pay cut, in real terms, that they are suffering, where there is extreme demoralisation among nurses and a severe crisis in being able to recruit and retain them because of massive understaffing and so on in hospitals in the North and elsewhere throughout the UK.

Does that not sound familiar? Simultaneously, down here, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, has suggested industrial action may be necessary because of the catastrophe nurses are facing in the South. I invite the Taoiseach to indicate his support for nurses in the North, who are going on strike to get decent pay, and to recognise the desperate pleas of nurses in our own hospitals, down South, regarding the absolute crisis and demoralisation they face because of chronic under-resourcing, understaffing, a lack of beds and, added to that, the impossibility of finding affordable accommodation for many nurses because of the Government's failure to address the housing crisis.

See this speech in context