Graduate nurses better paid than most workers

AFTER reading Dessie Ellis’s typical anti-Government rant masquerading as a pro-nurses letter (Irish Examiner, April 13), a few things came to mind:

1. If someone is doing a four-year degree course, he or she must have a fair idea of the income to be expected when qualified. Nurses are not leaving the job for more money. It’s more likely that because nursing is the easiest medical course to get into, with fewer points needed, they use it as a stepping stone and a way of getting a degree.

2. The nursing degree is a fairly recent innovation. Are all the older, non-degree nurses inferior to the graduates? If not, then why this degree thing? Was it a ploy to create more money for nurses in the first place?

3. Newly-qualified young nurses are not doing at all badly on €31,000 a year. Most people would not reach that scale after years of working.

4. A 39-hour week is not too long. Anything less is close to part-time.

5. If Mr Ellis thinks Government ministers have it so good, why does he not try to become one? But first he must be prepared to work 39 hours in less than three days instead of seven.

I believe most people are sick of the nurses’ greed and bullying tactics. It’s only a few years since they were on the march. A deal was done then, but still they are not happy. Will they ever be?

Edward O’Raghallaigh

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