Nursing internship pay
Senator Devine criticises the lack of implementation of an agreement on nursing internships, saying the 2011 intake is being paid less than newer graduates. The Chair corrects a mistaken assumption about the speaker’s group.
I am not from Mayo; I am from Dublin, thank you very much.
Comment on this
Last week I attended a briefing in Leinster House with representatives of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and SIPTU on the lack of implementation of what had been agreed with the Health Service Executive, HSE, on nursing internships. The agreement was reneged on by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and it is leaving the 2011 intake of nurses who trained until 2015 with less pay than the graduates we will see this September and October. The people in question are mentoring, teaching and passing on experience to less experienced nurses who are just about to qualify. One can contrast this with the massive spending on agency staff day in and day out in the HSE. Some €2.2 million is spent on agency staff each week, while the cost of trying to keep the nurses here is just over €4 million. Nevertheless, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is refusing to meet the trade union representatives. It is hypocritical in the extreme to appeal to nurses to come home and have a better career when they will have no such thing. They will have less pay as there are better salaries, terms and conditions abroad. What message does this send when nurses are in such short supply?
I e-mailed the Minister last Thursday and offered to facilitate a meeting between union officials and his Department in an attempt to resolve the issue, but there was no response. I also note that there was no response to an e-mail sent by the unions. The result was that hundreds of union members were forced to take to the streets yesterday in a first show of dissent which has the capacity to develop into further industrial action. We currently have bus drivers on picket lines and it looks like that gardaí will be next. Do we want nurses outside hospital doors also when there is a crisis within the health care system? I appeal to the Minister to sit down with unions to resolve the issue.