Irish Examiner view: INMO conference highlights lack of urgency in protecting workers
Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha is not exaggerating when she says the INMO has been highlighting the problem of assaults on nurses for 'quite some time'. File picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) holds its annual conference this week in Dundalk, and general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha has outlined some of its members’ concerns.
For instance, there is a rising number of assaults on nurses, according to Ms Ní Sheaghdha: “Verbal assault is on the increase and unfortunately physical assault... This is well known to the HSE.
"It’s well known to the Health and Safety Authority."
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“We’ve been on the record now for quite some time calling for stronger measures. Putting signs up at a hospital saying there will be consequences is not good enough. The consequences have to be real.”
Ms Ní Sheaghdha is not exaggerating when she says the INMO has been highlighting this problem for “quite some time”.
Last year, its conference heard that up to 12 nurses or midwives were being assaulted in the health system every day. On that occasion, the organisation’s president Caroline Gourley said that safe staffing in the workplace was an essential issue, to be dealt with by employers.
At the 2024 conference there was a similar story, when delegates heard that 4,106 nurses were assaulted between January 2023 and February 2024, though the true figure was believed to be higher given the under-reporting of such incidents.
The pressures on the health services have been reported in detail over the years, but the ongoing lack of protection for frontline health service workers should be headline news. Everyone is entitled to a safe working environment, but here it appears that the opposite is the case. If thousands of nurses and midwives are assaulted on an annual basis then those workplaces are not lightly policed or potentially volatile — they are actively unsafe.
The fact that we hear the same complaints about assaults year after year shows a deeply concerning lack of urgency in addressing this problem, despite Ms Ní Sheaghdha’s call for real consequences for such assaults. We seem to be a long way from the celebration of healthcare staff during the pandemic.
This week, two stories coincided which flesh out one of the curious by-products of modern life — the disappearance of privacy courtesy of technology.
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Amy Campbell reported this week that Cork City Council has opened an enforcement file in relation to a drone delivery service which recently began operating in the southside of the city.
Meanwhile, Emer Walsh wrote about an ice cream shop in Cork which has stated it is reviewing a recent incident at one of its outlets which was filmed and widely shared on social media.
Regarding drone activity, Ms Campbell wrote that a petition to stop drone noise in Cork and Dublin has already received hundreds of signatures.
It describes “repeated loud noise overhead, intrusion into gardens and outdoor space, many times per hour, day after day”.
That sense of intrusion should not be underestimated when people must contend with a large drone hovering over their homes or near their bedroom windows.
That is replicated in the other story, where Ms Walsh reported that it is understood that the individual believed to have filmed the incident at the ice cream shop has previously filmed other “pranks”, which were subsequently posted on social media.
One of those videos was removed by TikTok for violating its rules around adult sexual abuse when the individual filmed a young woman undergoing a medical emergency in Cork City as she was being treated by paramedics.
There are serious questions to be asked of any person who would think it appropriate to film anyone getting urgent medical treatment from paramedics. It is difficult to imagine that anyone could think immediately of using a camera in those circumstances, let alone post such footage online — yet that appears to be the case here.
Whether through unwelcome and invasive drone activity or the brazen intrusion of influencers, our very notion of privacy appears to be under attack from all sides.
Summer is looming large though our questionable weather might suggest otherwise.
Those grey skies may encourage many readers to look abroad for sunshine, and widespread cancellations of flights due to rising fuel prices will hardly dissuade those seeking the comfort of foreign beaches.
If Michael O’Leary’s latest suggestion is adopted by airports, however, some of those travellers may not enjoy their journeys as much this year.
The Ryanair boss said this week that his airline is forced to divert almost one flight a day due to disruptive passengers — a significant increase compared to 10 years ago, when the number was closer to one diversion a week.
He placed the blame squarely on airport bars which serve passengers early in the morning.
“We are reasonably responsible, but the ones who are not responsible, the ones who are profiteering off it, are the airports who have these bars open at five or six o’clock in the morning and during delays are quite happy to send these people as much alcohol as they want because they know they’re going to export the problem to the airlines,” he said.
For many passengers a pre-flight drink calms the nerves and heralds the arrival of the holiday itself, but disruption on a plane can be frightening and potentially lethal.
Ryanair has claimed in the past that the cost of diverting one flight because of unruly passengers was €15,000.
Are we about to see dry airports just in time for summer?
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