Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Boyhan and the Seanad Independent Group for bringing forward this Private Members' motion. Sinn Féin is very happy to support it. It is relevant to every county and to most hospitals.I commend Senator Boyhan on using this Private Members' business to move this motion. I will use my contribution to call on the Minister for Health, the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, whom we worked well with during our shared time in the Seanad, the Department and the HSE to ensure the recruitment of these 100 neurology specialist nurses as recommended by the HSE's own model of care. We need the Minister and the Department to ensure that there are no obstacles to the HSE drawing down money to recruit and train these nurses. By the HSE's reckoning, we have approximately 30% of the specialist neurology nurses that we need, which is making their job difficult. We need 100 more.

Over the past two years, budgets have promised thousands of staff, but they have not materialised. It is vital that these 100 nursing posts are allocated and filled. Specialist nursing staff are needed to manage long-term neurological conditions, monitor patients, adjust medication amounts and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. Having nursing capacity in the system to support consultants would reduce the need for outpatient consultants and free up staff time to get through waiting lists. There are more than 23,000 patients on neurology waiting lists, yet only some of these nursing posts have been sought to be filled this year. That is not good enough. The Minister and the HSE need to ensure that there are no obstacles to drawing down the full funding required for recruiting and training nurses for these posts.

I commend the motion and am proud to give it Sinn Féin’s support. I thank Senator Boyhan for tabling it and the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, for attending.