Seanad debates

Thursday, 17 December 2020

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

12:30 pm

Photo of Paul GavanPaul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will raise two issues. The first I have raised before, along with Senators from all sides of the Chamber, and that is the plight of the student nurses. I quote some voices from the front line, which were contained in a powerful article in The Irish Times yesterday:

So far I have washed and fed patients, emotionally supported them and have been on the ward as two patients have died ... I’ve worked 12-hour shifts back to back and been so tired I’ve been physically sick.

A second student nurse said,

Since I commenced my nursing studies in 2017 “sure we have the students” is a sentence I have commonly heard. Staff members who are sick or off on leave are very seldom replaced when a student nurse is on placement.

A third student nurse was then quoted as saying,

I have to ask do they really think it is acceptable to have young students working 35 hours completely unpaid during the worst pandemic of our time risking their lives and that of their families and being completely burnt out and disillusioned before they even begin their careers? Student nurses will never forget the actions of this Government and the exploitation that has occurred.

I am raising this issue because I thought we had an agreement from the last debate that student nurses should be paid. However, I am hearing now from the Fianna Fáil Minister for Health that they should not be paid but the allowances will be looked at. Perhaps I could be called old-fashioned, but I think that if somebody does a day's work, then that person should be paid for it. I think that is something all of us should be able to agree on in this Chamber. The fact that these nurses continue to face into the Covid-19 pandemic in these circumstances without pay is nothing less than a national disgrace. I call again for an urgent debate and urgent action from the Government on this issue.

The second issue I wish to raise concerns the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, trade deal. In the words of the leader of the Green Party in 2017, the now Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, "We should look for a different form of trade deal, one which absolutely copperfastens the sovereignty of the nation against the corporation and one that absolutely guarantees the environmental standards that everyone says they want to protect." He also said then that he feared "that in the dispute resolution mechanism CETA enshrines ... we are ceding power and sovereignty to corporations". I really agree with what he said then and in the five years I have been here, this is the biggest U-turn I have ever seen from any political party.

I ask the Leader for two things. First, I request that we have a debate on this issue in the new year. Surely, we all want to have a say on this matter and we should have that say before the vote takes place in the Dáil. My second request concerns the sensible suggestion made by my colleague, Senator Lynn Boylan, that we deal with this matter and examine the proposal in depth in the Joint Committee on Climate Action before the vote. If people are confident that there is nothing wrong with CETA, then they should be confident in their arguments and allow that approach to happen. I am genuinely shocked at the stance of the Green Party on CETA. I sat alongside colleagues from that party when campaigning against CETA and I am genuinely flabbergasted at this U-turn. I ask that we have an urgent debate on this matter and that we all agree that the correct way forward is via the Joint Committee on Climate Action.

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