Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Hoey and her party for once again being the voice of the working class in this country. Fair play to the Labour Party. It always puts the workers first. I also pay tribute to Phil Ní Sheaghdha and the executive committee of the INMO. Having been the president of a union myself, I can only imagine the pressure that has been on the executive of the INMO to take some sort of action to defend its members and its future members, namely, the students. They need our full support and backing. Fair play to them. I recognise what they are doing.

One thing has become clear to me during this pandemic, which is that the lowest paid in our society have been thrown under the bus to keep this country running. I am talking about the supermarket workers, the truck drivers, the Defence Forces, the trainee gardaí and the student nurses. I was in hospital for surgery in January and I can tell the Minister about my first-hand experience of the work done by those men and women, from the moment one enters the hospital, to protect patients. This is important for people who are non-Covid patients and who need to go into hospital today. The work the nurses do to keep patients safe as they pass through the system is unbelievable. Then one meets these young people. I ask the Minister to think of an 18- or 19-year-old student being expected to explain to somebody with severe dementia what is going on, being expected to play the part of a family member, being expected to comfort people when a death takes place and in some cases having to relay the news that a loved one has passed away. We are here talking about a Bill to pay them.

I commend Senator Hoey on what she has done but, ultimately, we all know that this Bill will have its second reading and that is all it will have. We are never going to see this Bill actually pass into law, despite all the nice words that are being said here. The Minister has it within his gift to do something and he should do it this evening. It is obscene that we are paying a man an additional €81,000 on top of a salary of approximately €200,000 when there are people who cannot afford to feed their families. Nurses cannot go home to their families for fear of bringing an infection with them and we are sitting here debating a Bill which should never have gotten this far because that to which it relates should have been done automatically. I do not share the fears of my colleague, Senator Mullen, about this creating a precedent that we will have to live with for the future. If one does the job, he or she must get paid for it.