Government facing continued scrutiny over student nurses' pay
Sinn Fein's Pearse Doherty: student nurses are doing indispensable work and getting no financial recognition for their efforts." Picture: :Gareth Chaney/Collins
The Tánaiste says he is in favour of paying student nurses doing the work of staff nurses.
The government recently voted down a bill to pay student nurses who are working on the frontline in a pandemic, to much public criticism.
A statement by Fianna Fáil at the time was widely criticised after stating: "Student nurses in their final year or pre–registration year are paid because they are different and do real work on wards.”
Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty said during Leader's Questions that student nurses are plugging the gaps and a health system that is under severe pressure.
"Our student nurses do amazing work, and you, Tánaiste have worked in our hospitals.
"I'm sure you've seen that first-hand. But the IMO [is] crystal clear on the issue. Our students are being taken for granted.
"They're facing huge workloads and risking Covid-19 infection. And while they're doing indispensable work, they're getting no financial recognition for their efforts."
The extra work comes with serious risk and comes with no reward, he said.
"The message is simple. Stop exploiting student nurses and midwives."
The reality is, he added, nurses are plugging the gaps in "a health system that is under severe pressure".
The Fine Gael parliamentary party heard on Wednesday night that the government had committed "an own goal" on the issue.
The Tánaiste said that despite the fact students on many courses are not paid, if a student nurse is "acting up" replacing a paid staff member during the pandemic, they should be compensated.
"For nurses who are near one two and three, they're the unpaid years, like all our students on a degree course they're not paid. I spent a lot of time in lectures and labs and libraries and unsupervised work experience or placements and when you do a degree course it is not the norm to be paid for that.
"This is a degree course now, it's not an apprenticeship or cadetship, that's a very different thing, a very old model, and a model we decided we wanted to move away from 20 years ago, after the nursing commission.
"However, I do think that where a student nurses are acting up where they're filling in first off nurse, where they're doing the work of a staff nurse because a ward in a clinical area is understaffed.
"Well, I do think they should be paid for that quite frankly."
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