Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 663 patients without beds in hospitals across this State today, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO. Its members continue to be concerned about their ability to provide safe care in what the INMO describes as an intolerable situation for vulnerable patients and front-line workers alike.

After a month-long consultation, the INMO executive has sanctioned a campaign of industrial action on safe staffing, with ballots to take place on a location-by-location basis. Nurses are reporting that unsafe staffing is now the norm and the Taoiseach continues to preside over a severe and protracted staffing crisis in our hospitals. Like the junior doctors who balloted for strike action last year, nurses and their representatives will not have come to this decision lightly, as the Taoiseach will know. It is the last thing they want to do. They want to be on the wards, doing the work for which they were trained. It is astonishing that the INMO has to call out the Department of Health and the HSE to produce a fully funded strategic workforce plan for the coming winter. Surely it is now time for the Taoiseach to establish a high-level group, to include him, the Ministers for Health; Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science; and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, to develop and produce a formalised ten-year health workforce strategy.

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