Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their contributions. I thank the Minister for being here. I have recovered a little from my nervous jog up the stairs and I am a little calmer now that we are on the other side of my first go at this.

It seems that all in the room are in agreement that student nurses and midwives should be paid while they are working. It is clear from the testimonies of the students I read into the record today that student nurses are working from their first year all the way up to their final year. We are having a slight dispute over this and there are technicalities associated with what is defined as work, but the student nurses and midwives are working. There is no question about that.

Comments made by some people, although not made here today, to the effect that what student nurses are doing is not real work have been deeply hurtful, unfounded and really uncalled for. I have to hand the comment of a nurse who said:

To see the Government tell us we are not doing real work is a huge kick in the teeth. I have never been so hurt and upset by a comment they have no place making. I truly wish they could spend a day in my shoes and see what they have to say for themselves then.

The key point is that none of us in this room has spent a day in nurses' shoes. Perhaps some have but I am just unaware of their background. We are not on the front line and we are not nurses. I hope the testimonies give an insight into the reality students are facing on the ground.

Let me address some of the issues that have been raised. Regarding work, I alluded to the fact that student nurses and midwives have actually been working for a period longer than that of the pandemic and will continue to work after the pandemic is over, whatever that looks like. Therefore, while we have a need to deal with the additional workload undertaken over the past 12 months, I am still very firm in my belief that we need to recognise that student nurses and midwives from first year onwards have been working and will continue to do so. Therefore, I still believe this legislation is appropriate.

I want to respond to the statement that paying those who are working or training while students might set a precedent. I assume that it will strike no one as a surprise that as a former head of a union and student activist, I do indeed believe all people should be paid for work and that the line between work and training is thin, to say the least. A journalist asked me whether I believe everyone who is working while training should be paid and I said they should. There was a deathly silence. I will continue to be very firm in my belief. For example, I support SIPTU's call for radiographers to be paid and other calls coming up the line to pay students who are working. We should not build the public sector on the back of unpaid labour.

It was stated that we need to keep nurses and midwives here and that we have a shortage. It is common sense, therefore, that we should be treating our student nurses and midwives better. We should be paying them and treating them with respect and valuing the contribution they make from first year up. To treat people poorly at the start of their careers simply gives them an incentive to leave as soon as they can and go somewhere they will be paid well, respected and have a good quality of life. It is, therefore, a bad business decision not to pay student nurses and midwives. The evidence exists to back this up. We have high rates of emigration and a nursing shortage. We have overseas campaigns to recruit nurses from abroad. Even from a basic business perspective, we have got to get this right because student nurses, whether we agree with them or not, want to be paid and feel the need to be paid. Since they are not being paid, they are making plans to leave this country.

In 2014, when I was the president of the Union of Students in Ireland, we carried out a survey of student nurses and learned that 93% of them said they were considering emigrating. That number is bananas. If we were to propose in a business model to treat the student nurses as we are treating them, and do so in the knowledge that about 93% would think about leaving at the other side, we would not get away with it. We need to be very clear about that.We have the best education system in the world but are we getting the benefit of having such a system if these student nurses and midwives are emigrating?

There is no question about the commitment to teaching and learning. The Minister has agreed to the payment of a weekly stipend of €100, so it seems that we may be splitting hairs over what we call it. That may be for legal or technical reasons. I do not know because I am still relatively new to this. We need to find a way forward and there needs to be financial remuneration for the work that those involved are doing. That is probably the simplest way to look at it. They are doing work and there needs to be some sort of financial remuneration for them. I am happy to sit down with the Minister in order to figure out a way to facilitate the introduction of that remuneration, whether through this legislation or by some other means.

Telling students that we are refusing to pay them in order to protect their learning will not cut the mustard with the student nurses or midwives. Where there is a will there is a way. The Minister is a clever man so I am sure he can figure out a solution. Between now and this Bill being sent into the ether, I implore him to sit down with the trade unions and find a way forward. I thank all the student nurses and midwives who are helping to hold our system together and, in particular, I thank those who have been taking good care of a special friend of mine in Beaumont Hospital for the past week.