Gino Kenny on student nurse exploitation and pay during COVID-19

Minister, this is a very important debate that is going on in relation to the position of student nurses in our health service. There is a huge amount of exploitation going on where student nurses are working in the front line which is a very precarious place at this moment in time and they feel they are being exploited and not being recognised for their work so it is important that you address the relation to student nurses. Thank you very much. I will go back. Thank you Deputy. In my earlier response to Deputy Cullinan I dealt with some of the issues raised by the deputies. I am proposing Lasky and Cawola to take questions. We have served that Minister. Okay. So several of the issues have been discussed with Deputy Cullinan earlier on so I would like to raise some additional issues now. So concerning the fourth year nursing and midwifery students, the HSE continues to fund the internship employment of these students who are on rostered work placements. This includes those scheduled to commence in the coming weeks and those due to commence the work roster placement in 2021. The fourth year student nurses on rostered placement are paid at an approved rate of €22,229 on an annualised basis for psychiatric nursing and 21,749 for all other nursing disciplines. I am very open to examining what other measures can be put in place to protect and support student nurse and midwife education and welfare at the present time. My priority is to ensure that the placements continue for as long as it is safe to do so. In that regard my department is engaging with the HSE and higher education bodies on an ongoing basis. Separately, and for the longer term, my department is also reviewing the accommodation and travel allowances for students on clinical placements that should apply from the academic year commencing autumn 2021 and onwards. This review is expected to conclude at the end of November and I look forward to examining the outcome of the review. Regarding the testing of students when they are assigned to a placement, the testing regime follows the national system that the HSE has in place at this time. Minister, two weeks ago, representatives from the Irish nurses midwife organisation came into the health committee and their submission was quite extraordinary. In their submission, 3,400 students are in placements in the Irish hospitals at the moment. Obviously, because of the nature of COVID, it is an extremely precarious position. But there was one thing that stood out to me in their submission in relation to student nurses. I will just read it out. The failure of the HSE to re-reuminate them amounts to exploitation of them 3,400 students. Now, that situation is pretty awful. When you turn to the next page, where it says 50 nursing staff per day are being affected by COVID-19. Now, this is a situation that is, as I said, very, very precarious and student nurses feel very, very let down, not recognised for their work, but also not recognised financially. So, you have to address that, Minister. Thank you. Thanks, Minister. Just in relation to the world that we used to live in prior to COVID-19. It feels like a different world. But many student nurses could take up other jobs in nursing homes and so forth. No, they can't do that. It's just obviously, you know, for all sorts of reasons they can. So, financially, they are out of pocket. And living on 50 euros a day or 50 euros a week with the allowance on the responsibility that that entails has a huge detrimental effect on their wellbeing. Because the nursing profession is a hard, hard, hard job. And people that work in that profession are extremely dedicated and fearful sometimes of the nature of the business that they're in. But I think it's so important that you, as Minister for Health, recognise students, that whether they're in first or second year, of course they're educating themselves. Of course. I used to work alongside them. But it's really important that they're financially recognised. And particularly now, because of the, you know, because of C-19, where it's really important that you recognise them. Not only educationally, but financially. Thank you. Thank you, Lasky and Corley. Look, can I say I hear you. And I recognise and we all recognise the work, first of all, of our qualified nursing and midwifery professions. Right across, right across the country in community healthcare and in the hospital system as well. Do the student nurses make a valuable contribution on their educational payments? You're damn right they do. Do they work hard? They work damn hard. Absolutely they do. And they're the only clinical group that are funded for their educational payment. Are we looking at increasing that in a time of COVID? Absolutely I am. And we're engaged in doing that. I have a genuine concern, colleagues, that if we replicated what happened in the first wave, that it could come at risk to the educational element of these placements. And these placements for first, second and third year nursing students, first and foremost, are part of their degree. So can we and must we do more? Absolutely. And at the same time, we must protect their education as well. Thank you. So what I'm looking at doing and what we're engaging with doing is the two of those things at the same time. Thank you, Minister. Thank you. Thank you.