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?