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

The well-being of many, if not most, of our students is not in a good place. The email that Holly, the student nurse from Athlone, sent to all of us is emblematic of the crisis facing many students. She talks about something on which we put a motion forward during Covid, that is, the failure to pay student nurses on placement. You can add to that those in mental health nursing, early childhood education, medicine, social care and many other areas, where they are being exploited working in our health service and paid nothing. Does the Taoiseach know how much student nurses in Scotland get? They get £10,000 sterling per year. Here, people doing the same thing get zero. It is disgraceful. As Holly points out, it is any wonder that people qualifying in these areas then leave the country because they feel totally undervalued. I was at the IADT, which I am sure the Taoiseach is familiar with, at the student union protest last week. One of the big features of the student protest and the speeches was the accommodation, cost-of-living and financial crises huge numbers of students are facing. The cost and the unavailability of accommodation, but also the mental health stress they are suffering, the lack of supports for students' mental and physical health and the pressure mean it is just too much.

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