Today is a sad day for the health service with 35,000 nurses throughout Ireland on the picket lines. This is not a decision they took easily or lightly. To hear the individual stories of nurses and of the challenges they face every day in their working lives is heartbreaking. The Government has repeatedly ignored nurses as they warn of major problems in recruitment and retention. We are too late to stop the strike today but it is not too late to stop the other five days of threatened action, the further cancellation of appointments, the further upset for nurses and patients alike. I do not expect the Taoiseach to repeat all the answers he has given already because I listened carefully to them and they have not filled me with hope. Can the Taoiseach please give some hope to the nurses and the patients today however?

I want to speak on the same issue. We have heard many Members speak this morning about the nurses and midwives and I have listened to the Taoiseach speak about the fear of borrowing money or about it being affordable for the taxpayer. However, the Taoiseach can still propose - and we will be discussing it later - taking €500 million of taxpayers' money and putting it into a so-called rainy day fund. That will only bail out the banks and it will not assist the health system or the housing system.

I will ask the Taoiseach another question. Does the Government have a plan B because after the nurses and midwives, we will see the Psychiatric Nurses Association and the paramedics on. Then we have our GPs coming down the road and we have an ongoing issue with the Defence Forces. What will the Government do? If it is not going to engage with the nurses and midwives, it will be the same agenda. Will we be coming in here for the next couple of weeks and discussing all these other issues?

We spend €1.4 million per week on agency nurses. There is one nurse available for every four vacancies. There is a €7,000 gap in pay and negotiations are ongoing in the WRC. There is a trolley situation, there are waiting lists and there is the issue of the winter bug, and I could go on and on. We always say one's health is one's wealth in life and the Taoiseach said this morning, and he keeps repeating it, that this will be sorted out. If it can be sorted out, can we not sort it out now before it gets worse? I am pleading with the Taoiseach. I hear talk about it costing €200 million or €300 million. I said yesterday that we all agree we need a new children's hospital but the best thing for the people of Ireland is to get this sorted because they have gone through a tough time for the last number of years. I ask the Taoiseach to please meet the nurses and get this sorted out.

Deputy Buckley has actually summed up the difficulty the Government faces very well because he listed every other member of our public service that has a concern, a difficulty or even a grievance in respect of pay. What every one of those groups will ask the Government, if we move in the way that some Deputies want, is what will it do for them and what will it do to respond to their needs? That is the challenge the Government faces.

When the Taoiseach speaks about the need to be fair to all public servants, he is speaking about the teachers who have campaigned on pay equality and the progress we have made on that. He is speaking about the members of our Defence Forces who are currently involved in the Public Service Pay Commission. If we go the way that some Deputies are advocating-----

The Government is not being fair to any of them.

-----we face into the very risk that Deputy Buckley described. The Government has engaged on this issue through the Public Service Pay Commission. We have been in the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court and we have done that because of our respect for the professionalism and the ability of our nurses and the work they do every day and also because of the need that we alone face to be conscious of all the other demands that many public servants are raising.