Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their contributions. This is an emotive issue. There is no way around this. It is trite to say things like "everybody loves nurses" and so on. We talk about these issues in the House all the time, but we must value our healthcare workers. I do not doubt the bona fides of the Senators reflecting on experiences in hospitals in their own areas. It is not just hospitals we are talking about, but also staff working in section 38 organisations, the voluntary hospitals, psychiatric units and residential units.

I mentioned a woman working in a residential unit who has been left many nights on her own there. We cannot have a situation where section 38 workers are left on their own in residential units. The place where this woman was working on her own is out in the country. The facility has vulnerable people she cannot get to because she has been left working on her own. I am pretty certain she is going to leave her job and the service in the next couple of weeks. This is not good enough.

Unfortunately, this is happening under the Minister's watch. We must condemn the fact that this is happening. We must condemn the fact that we have got ourselves into a situation and a state where this kind of behaviour has been deemed acceptable. I must also take issue with the Minister when he said it was incorrect to say we have a recruitment and retention crisis, when only last Friday INMO executive council agreed to ballot the union's members on industrial action. Many in the INMO, IMO, SIPTU and Fórsa would probably take umbrage with the Minister saying there is not a recruitment and retention crisis when they are saying they feel unsafe in their workplaces because there are not enough staff. I am struggling to marry these two aspects together. HE outlined enormous recruitment numbers, but are we accounting for the numbers exiting the healthcare service?

I must stand up and speak on behalf of the unions on this issue, because of what they, their members and the people who filled out our survey told us. I have pages and pages of testimony, as I am wont to do, from people who feel unsafe in their workplaces. All of them mention feeling unsafe because there are not enough staff. They are all talking to me about this. The question simply asked whether people had experienced any behaviour that made them feel unsafe in their workplace and if there was anything else they would like to add in this regard. It was not a leading question, and all of them got back to me to say they felt unsafe because there were not enough staff to be able to do anything about the situation. I, therefore, take umbrage at the Minister's description. It is something I am sure people listening would feel does not reflect their situation.That may be a challenge for the Minister to look at, if people are saying in the service that they feel unsafe with the staffing numbers but that the Minister is saying that he has record numbers of staff coming in. Those two are still not adding up. I do not know what is happening if we have record numbers of staff coming in for four years in a row, yet I have staff, former staff and people who are currently working in many of these places coming to me saying that there are just not enough staff. This is an appalling indictment of our health service where we have a nurse attacked on a night, and the most time she can take off is to go to the bathroom, to wipe herself down, to clean and to give herself a splash of water over her face because there is simply not enough staff for her to walk off the ward. It is a terrible indictment of our health service when this happens where I have a staff member who is saying that they were attacked so badly that they do not think that they will ever go back to work again. Another section 38 worker's upper arms were so badly hurt they could not even lift up their grandchild. That is a terrible indictment. These people are saying that they want to go back to work and feel so guilty that their colleagues are being left to deal with this on their own.

The Minister has outlined some of the things that are happening and there is no question but that this is an immensely difficult period. We have come through Covid-19 and there is a lot of talk about what it is like to work in the public health service. I do not envy the Minister's position to have to try to pull people into this service but the burden is on me to stand up to say that the reality of what we are hearing on the ground is not matching what he is saying with respect to his numbers. I am not saying that the numbers are not happening; it is about the situation on the ground with the people who have spoken to us who are not feeling the benefit of these numbers and they feel it is unsafe. When we have unions who are talking about taking industrial action and going on strike; we have to listen to that seriously.

I will quickly end by thanking the people who put the their faith in the Labour Party and in us by telling us the stories. I have not even been able to read out some of the stories because some people just rang me and wanted to get something off their chest. They were difficult stories to listen to. I very much hope that when the Minister leaves, and I have listened to all of the things that is going to do, that what is very important is that we need to put together plans of action for those nurses, security workers, psychiatric nurses, porters, canteen workers and ancillary staff, which will help them this week. Plans of action and comfort needs to be given to them so that they will be able to go into a safe workplace and that the Government, the Minister, the HSE and all of those actors will work together to ensure that they have a safe workplace. We do not want to end up in a situation where we have industrial action being led by unions because of unsafe staffing levels. That is what is ultimately at the root of what we are discussing today. I hope that we do not find ourselves in that situation because it would be a very poor indictment of this Government if we have nurses and staff walking off their jobs because of unsafe safe staffing levels. We will be out on the picket line with them. I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach.