Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I second Senator Rose Conway-Walsh's amendment to the Order of Business.

Shortages of nursing staff are, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation today, compromising services. We have been highlighting that for a long time. Safe care and dignity of patients is at risk. The HSE has removed provisions for agency staff in many services and the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, has repeatedly pointed to hospitals being decimated, patients receiving minimum care, poor hygiene standards and the administration of medicines being delayed. There are more than 3,000 vacancies to be filled and that is just to keep services ticking over. There is no room for expansion in the context of our growing population. We are in the bizarre position where nurses with years of professional experience are being denied access to work here, even as the HSE is making a worldwide appeal for nursing staff. I have talked to several nurses who are back here having left in 2004 in order to work in America and whose applications to be put on the register have been denied. Over 100 have made such applications and only nine have been placed on the register. I ask that the Minister would instruct An Bord Altranais to review the criteria, to act with urgency on the obligatory theory hours and to gain an understanding of the American education system. More than 100 additional nursing posts would provide a great boost, particularly in terms of patient care.