I have been speaking directly to staff outside Portiuncula and Roscommon hospitals, nursing staff who want to be caring for patients instead of picketing. I wish to ask about a commitment in the programme for Government that could provide a flexibility that is now needed to overcome the impasse in the dispute without undermining the national pay agreement. Page 61 of A Programme for a Partnership Government reads:

We will review the roles and responsibilities of various healthcare professionals working in our hospitals. This will include further transfer of tasks between doctors and nurses...

Can this review be brought forward in order to avert the three-day strike that is planned for next week and will have a devastating impact on patients awaiting appointments?

On page 66 of A Programme for a Partnership Government, the Government promises to implement new procedures to ensure the more efficient and timely recruitment of nurses but we now have a major problem with their recruitment and retention. I am not surprised. First-time nurses must be paid the same as other university graduates. The conditions that our nurses work under are unacceptable, with overcrowding and poor support from management. Nurses are rightly angry. Tomorrow, nurses from the Schull, Castletownbere, Bandon, Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Kinsale and Skibbereen community hospitals will strike outside their hospitals with their fellow nurses in Bantry General Hospital, fighting for their rights and the rights of the patients for whom they care. There are five senior and junior health Ministers. Can the Government sit down and do what it has to do to find an immediate solution to nurses' pay and conditions before it forces these nurses out on strike again tomorrow?

On the crisis in the recruitment and retention of nurses, the Minister will be forced to admit at this stage that the Government's recruitment drive has been a dismal failure. Irish nurses working across the globe are sending messages of solidarity to their striking colleagues and encouraging them to stand up for themselves, remain strong and stay out. Irish nurses working abroad will never come home to work in the profession they love because of the poor pay and conditions on offer and gross understaffing. Newly qualified teachers are getting on the first plane out of this place. The problem of staffing cannot be addressed until the issue of poor pay and conditions is addressed. That is why the Government's recruitment drive has fallen flat on its face and on deaf ears. Nurses are striking for that good reason and the public is behind them. When will the Government get its head out of the sand and deal with the reality that until it addresses the issue of poor pay and conditions, the recruitment and retention crisis is set to continue indefinitely?

We have recruited over 3,000 more nurses into the public health service in the past few years. We have a national wage agreement that prioritises those on low and middle incomes in wage restoration and wage growth. We have a national wage agreement which, on the new entrant issue alone, makes provision for a needed and recognised wage increase of €3,000 to deal with an issue that has been raised in this House. I hear Deputy after Deputy say that while we need to pay nurses more, we do not want to undermine what is a collective wage agreement. These are the same Deputies who, when we were dealing with the issue of An Garda Síochána in 2016, accused the Government of undermining the national wage agreement. Deputy Naughten made a constructive suggestion on how the issue could be moved forward. In terms of the engagement that has happened to date, an attempt was made to deal with this issue inside the current national wage agreement. We then had a period of engagement for over a year at the Public Service Pay Commission that produced a report that was welcomed by many Deputies who are now criticising it. The Government is open to and trying to use proposals such as those identified by Deputy Naughten to find a way through this most difficult issue. Of course, the Opposition Deputies who are raising the issue of the plight and work of nurses today, something that is recognised fully on this side of the House also, are the same Opposition Deputies who the next day will be raising the issue of why workers in every other part of the public service are not receiving the same wage increases.