On several occasions now, I have raised with the Taoiseach his refusal to pay student nurses and midwives. His decision has been met with understandable anger, not just from the students themselves but also from the public. Last Thursday, I met online with student nurses and midwives from all over the country. They shared with me their experiences and recounted the very real work they do in our hospitals. Their kindness, professionalism and dedication to nursing is in sharp contrast to the shoddy way they are being treated by the Taoiseach's Government. They are angry at the Taoiseach's suggestion that their nursing colleagues are exploiting them. They are livid, in fact, that the Taoiseach deflects from his refusal to pay them by blaming other nurses. They said to me how dare anyone, especially the Taoiseach, suggest they are being abused or exploited by other nurses. They say that the Taoiseach is the exploiter.

Nurses in hospitals are facing overcrowding, a lack of staff and stressful conditions, and this is the result of decades of bad Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policy. Student nurses walk onto those same wards and they do what comes naturally to them. They say it would go against every fibre of their being not to help patients in distress or relieve pressure on their colleagues when a ward is incredibly busy. They say that the only abuse and exploitation here is the Taoiseach's Government's persistent refusal to pay them. Other nurses are not to blame, so I ask the Taoiseach to drop that nonsense.

This is about the values of his Government. Its treatment of student nurses and midwives demonstrates again that the Taoiseach's chaotic Government is completely out of touch. The appalling lack of fairness is there for all to see. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have no problem showing up for their friends, and no problem whatsoever looking after those at the top. I refer to the developers, the big landlords and super junior Ministers and former taoisigh. Their hands are not tied then.

For student nurses and midwives, it is tea and sympathy, a round of applause and Government sends them back onto the wards with their pockets empty.

The Government just does not seem to get it. Student nurses did not just step into the breach at the start of this pandemic; they have always been in the breach. They have been doing the real work for years, but now because of Covid they have had to give up their part-time jobs which paid their bills and rent and helped them to cover the cost of attending college. Some have told me that, after their 13-hour shift, the first thing they do is go to the break room and cry, not only because nursing is tough but because they are broke and struggling to get by. Yet, they wipe their eyes, they get up the next day and they go back to doing it all over again. Student nurses and midwives show up every day for all of us and it is now time for the Government to show up for them.

Will the Taoiseach finally do the right thing? Will he tell them that they will be paid? Make no mistake; this is what the entire country expects him to do.

The Deputy has deliberately distorted and misrepresented what I said on the last number of occasions. On no stage have I ever suggested that other nurses exploit student nurses. That is a complete untruth. I said any employer that would take from a student his or her full student status, which is what the nursing degree is about, and use him or her on a 13-hour roster to work and not pay him or her is responsible for that exploitation, not fellow nurses and I never said that. The Deputy knows I did not say that, but it suits her to play the politics all of the time, to distort and to tell untruths about what I said, and to apportion words to me that were never said in this House.

I want to make one point. What the Deputy does not seem to get is that what she wants is to change the nursing degree back to an apprenticeship model. First year students do nine weeks' placement, roughly. That is meant to be a clinical placement and their status is meant to be full student status. The higher education institutes and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland are clear about that. The nursing degree programme was introduced to separate out and create the status of a student as opposed to a worker. The Deputy steadfastly refuses to deal with that issue, which is at the core of this. In second year, it is a 12-week placement and in third year it is a 12-week placement, although that can vary a little in some hospitals. It is 36 weeks in year four. Students are paid in their internship year in year four.

The Government is open to, and wants to, review this. My understanding is agreement has now been reached in terms of the chair of such an immediate review. The pandemic unemployment payment is being made available to student nurses. Student nurses were paid the healthcare system rate in the first wave of Covid, given the enormous impact of that first wave on hospitalisations. That impact has not been seen in the second wave, thanks be to God. We have 210 people in hospital as of this morning compared with 800-odd in the springtime.

Fianna Fáil transformed nurse education in this country. The Deputy will never acknowledge that. It is beyond her to acknowledge it because she is too partisan. I was the Minister for Health who introduced the nursing degree programme. I introduced it because the nursing professions wanted it, the nursing unions wanted it and those involved in advancing nurse education wanted it. They wanted to transform the whole idea of nurse education, not just at undergraduate level but postgraduate as well. That happened. There was an enormous investment, which was probably the largest investment ever, in nurse education, which resulted in schools of nursing in all of our universities and in all of our institutes of technology in the regions. That was the objective.

I am very clear that a student nurse on a clinical placement is a full-time student. If a nurse is asked to do work for a roster, that nurse should be paid by the employer for such a roster. I have been making this clear now for the past number of weeks. We have a problem in that we will need to review entirely the programme. Do we want to go back to an apprenticeship model? Is that what we want to do, such that the quality of the clinical placement and the learning process is significantly reduced, which is what it is meant to be about in the first instance? A first-year nursing student on a nine-week clinical placement is not meant to be working.

He or she is not meant to be treating Covid patients at 2 o'clock in the morning. That was never meant to be the case and it should not be. Successive Governments have invested in a strong infrastructure in hospitals to protect that clinical space and clinical placements for nursing students in order that they are a genuine learning environment for them. Fourth year student nurses get paid for the 36-week placement, which is a transition period into work. We are very committed to increasing the allowances available to students and also the fourth year payment, which is separate to that, immediately. There will also be a more medium-term review of the allowances coming out of that.

What is at the core of this, in reality, is a health service and a hospital system that is creaking at the seams. What is at the core of this is the fact that student nurses and midwives are very often the glue that keeps that system together and keeps the show on the road. What is also at the core of this, put very plainly, is a group of professionals in training working 13-hour shifts and not getting paid. It is as simple as that. The Taoiseach can deflect, divert and point the finger wherever he wishes but he is the Head of Government and this is now a very real problem for these students, for their families, and potentially, for the healthcare system itself. The Taoiseach is now saying that they should be paid. Is he in agreement with me that individuals working 13-hour shifts should be paid? He has stated that. The question then is why they are not being paid and what the Government is going to do to ensure that they are. I ask the Taoiseach not to take us off on a tangent with a discussion more generally around nurse education. Nobody is proposing to go back to the apprenticeship model. What we are strongly stating is that this work is being done and needs to be recognised, valued and paid.

The nursing degree programme, nurse education and the quality of it is not a tangent. It is at the very core of this issue and Deputy McDonald has steadfastly refused to address it because she knows the truth. The truth is that one cannot have both systems.

I know what is happening in our hospitals and it seems the Taoiseach does not, which is shocking.

I did not interrupt the Deputy. We cannot have both and she is pretending we can. She is not being honest in this debate. The heads of schools and departments of nursing are very clear that supernumerary status is a fundamental expression of full student status, which has ultimately brought enormous benefits to the professions of nursing and midwifery, to the health services and to society. I invite the Deputy to talk to the chief nursing officer.

They are not supernumerary. They are working on the wards.

I have worked with chief nursing officers in the past. Their greatest ambition was to move out of the dark ages and move into modern nurse education. Student nurses in first year should not have to work a 13-hour shift. They should not.

They are.

They have nine weeks of clinical placement for the entire year. That clinical placement should be protected and Deputy McDonald should be demanding that it be protected.

You should be paying them.

Everyone in this House should be doing that because it is the right thing to do by the students.

The Taoiseach's time is up.

Otherwise it is not a learning environment. Let us not kid ourselves and pretend it would be if people were working during the night and at 2 o'clock in the morning as first year nursing students on a nine-week placement. The nine-week placement is about learning.

Disgraceful.

It should not be about working rosters. This is not as simplistic as the Deputy wants to present it for political gain and to win votes and to be popular.

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up.

It is very simple. They are doing the work and the Government is not paying them.

That is the easy thing to do in here-----

That is pretty simple and straightforward.

-----and the Deputy is doing it on a consistent basis.

Please, time is up.

Sinn Féin's policy on nurse education is quite frankly incoherent.

Indeed. The Taoiseach should pay them.