Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As today is strike day, I am hardly going to get up and talk about anything else. This morning, I have been around, in the cold but crisp sunshine, to Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, St. James's Hospital, both the Rialto entrance and James's Street entrance, and the Coombe on Cork Street. I visited all three of them and plan to visit some more later on.

I think back to 20 years ago. In 1999, I was part of a strike committee, the national nurses strike committee. It took us nine days and nine nights in a row out on the picket line to get the Government to eventually sit down and talk, to realise it needed to be proactive, to understand and work out how to retain, recruit and keep nurses in the hospitals looking after the patients.

Today is the first day of the strike. There are many more planned. I hope it does not take as long - nine days and nine nights - for the Minister and the Department to come to their senses and sit down with nurses.

The spirits are high. The public are behind them, despite the spin from Fine Gael and from the fourth estate. Listening to RTÉ's Marian Finucane on Sunday and the different radio shows, they get on the same old same old, but the public is 82% supportive in the latest poll. Certainly, there was support this morning, with neighbours coming out with tea and buns for the nurses on the picket lines. I hope there is a resolution of this quicker than in 1999.