Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, the health unions, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, SIPTU and Fórsa. appeared before the Joint Committee on Health to discuss the abuse of and attacks on nurses and members of the medical professions. In 2021, there were more than 4,500 attacks on staff on the front line of the health service. Of those, almost 500 were investigated. Unfortunately, relatively few, if any, resulted in a prosecution. I want the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, to establish an internal department to deal specifically with abuse and attacks on front-line healthcare workers. It has a section dealing with farming, industry and so on, but from what I can see and from the evidence that was given to the committee yesterday, there are more attacks on nurses, doctors, administrative staff and paramedics than on workers in any other industry. It is high time this matter was dealt with by the HSA, the statutory body for dealing with workplace incidents such as these.

The Government also needs to have an information campaign. When people are understandably under pressure for one reason or another and present at emergency departments, they need to realise that the staff are there to help them. Abusing staff, raising their voices at them and treating them with disrespect does not do anybody any good. An information campaign is necessary and urgent. Based on what the committee was told at yesterday's meeting, if that does not happen, we will see a mass exodus of nurses and healthcare workers from the health industry. We do not need that. We need people to join the industry, rather than leave it. I suggest we have a debate, discussion or statements in the House on this significant issue in the not-too-distant future.