Marie Sherlock: Nurses, Safe Staffing and Rising Racism

Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle, and I want to very much welcome the opportunity to speak today on International Nurses Day. I believe the theme is Our Nurses, Our Future, Empowered Nurses to Save Lives and I've just come from the new National Children's Hospital and I want to pay particular tribute to the nurses that are leading the charge there, Lucy Nugent who's the Chief Executive of CHI and Julia Lewis who's the Head of Transformation and it is wonderful to see so many nurses now coming into senior leadership roles across our health service where for so many years it was dominated by the other professions. I also want to pay tribute to the nurses that I encountered in the Mater Emergency Department last night when I was in there with a friend and just the incredible professionalism and work rate that they bring every day to their jobs in what is a very difficult environment and we have seen a lot of commentary in recent weeks about the violence and aggression that we see not only in my own hospital within the Mater but in many hospitals across this state. The reality is that many of our nurses, all of our nurses work, many go beyond the call of duty to deliver care across a whole variety of environments and I think it's really important that when we talk about nurses today that we're not just focusing on the nurses who work in acute hospitals and they are incredibly important to the conversation but we also recognize the nurses in the nursing homes, in primary care clinics, in GP practices, the community midwives and of course our public health nurses as well. 15% of the nursing workforce in this country have come from other countries and our health service and particularly our nursing workforce would not be able to survive were it not for people from the likes of the Philippines and India coming to this country year after year to join our workforce and to them we must be very thankful but we also need to mind them and look after them and certainly the increasing racist commentary not only that we hear amongst politicians but also the really crude discourse that exists out there online and in our communities has put the fear of God into many migrant workers, migrant nurses and many other workers and this is something that I believe the government needs to act in a much more comprehensive fashion on. We were promised an information campaign on the benefits of migration we see it in our hospitals day in day out we've yet to see that campaign minister and I would really urge you that we need to see something specific to the health service and indeed many other sectors reassuring those workers who have come to our country but also calling out the racism that is out there. Today I have three questions minister and I suppose they're principally directed to the senior minister for health but I know you will you will take them so the first is with regards to safe staffing ratios so we know that in 2017 then minister for health Simon Harris introduced the general scheme for the patient safety bill and it went through pre-legislative scrutiny and it has been gathering dust ever since and we have to ask why is that and what are the government's intentions in this regard because when we look at the reality on the ground the INMO survey that uh the words that we heard in their that the INMO's national conference last week and in terms of their annual survey uh laying bare the extraordinary strain that so many nurses are working under 67 percent of staff believing that their current staffing levels at skill mix did not meet clinical and patient demands required in their work area over half of respondents saying that patient safety was almost always put at risk or certainly very often over half almost half pressurized to work additional shifts hours our shifts and shockingly a quarter of the nurses who respond to that survey saying that they had to attend a gp due to work related stress we know in other health grades within the health service that they similarly are suffering enormous stress and strain and we've seen that particularly with regards to the Forsa survey produced earlier this year and we have to ask what is the government response to this we know and I certainly acknowledge that the number of nurses has gone up significantly over the last five years it has gone up by about 9,700 just short of 10,000 nurses that is significant but we know that when we can benchmark Ireland across many of the other European countries against the OECD norms that we are significantly short and that has to be part of the conversation minister in terms of the future path for nurses working within right across our health system and how we ensure that they are kept safe and how we ensure that patients are kept safe and that piece of legislation is absolutely vital there's minimum staffing ratios and child care and education and yet we don't have it within our hospitals where nurses and other staff are providing crucial service we also have to look at the attitude of government and the hsc to commitments that they have made to nurses and indeed other health staff over the last number of years particularly the wrc agreement in 2024 specific commitments there with regards to agency with regards to outsourcing with regards to maternity cover and yet the unions had to to go back last november to the wrc to back to the labour court or go to the labour court with regards to non-implementation of the wrc agreement by the hsc now that is simply not on it is a a a misuse of the hsc's terms that they have to go trekking down to the wrc they committed to that agreement why are they not abiding by it and in february of this year we saw nurses and nays general hospital actually going on strike because of unsafe staffing this is a very real issue we need the hsc and the government to respond and i am alarmed that we now have a recruitment freeze and we've heard all the reassurances by the government but the reality is it is going to hit frontline workers the minister saying this week that there's an extra 300 million required for the health service that is going to impact outcomes that is going to impact services we raised these issues at the budget last year and we were told don't need to worry the health service is properly resourced we knew then it was not the case and now it is bearing fruit and that is a serious mismanagement for the department of health in terms of its budgeting the second question minister that i have too late i'm afraid well no deputy own kenny i'm happy to share well then that's fine thank you the two other questions minister i have for you is the strategic review and gps we've been promised this for a year and a half it's late are we going to see a reference to gp nurses they provide vaccines they provide smears and the the new chronic disease management program and are we going to see a reference and proper provision for them in the new gp contract and the last thing i want to say is with regards to public health nurses from what i can see here minister across every so the number of public health nurses across the country is less now than what it was five years ago and when i look down through almost through every region i believe that every single region has less public health nurses now than what it did five years ago why is the hse why is the department of health showing such contempt to primary health public health nurses and the delivery of nursing care in our community that needs to change you