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

At the end of last year, NESC produced a report on improving industrial relations. I suggest that NESC was absolutely right to focus on this subject when we consider that Fórsa has demonstrations today outside hospitals because of the really outrageous fact that a recruitment embargo has been imposed across our health service. Fórsa points out that due to this recruitment pause, there will be a serious impact on services. It also states that there will be a massive increase of pressure on staff, which will lead people to leave the health service when we are chronically short of staff, and that there is a massive over-reliance on outsourcing to agency workers and to private external consultants, all of which costs more in the end and causes services to come under pressure. I suggest we listen to the Fórsa workers, engage with them, and lift this crazy recruitment embargo-----

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