Taoiseach accuses opposition of ‘playing politics’ with ‘simplistic move’ on salary for nursing students

TAOISEACH MICHEÁL MARTIN has said that the debate on nursing students has been “highly politicized” and accused the opposition of presenting a “simplistic motion” to share it on social networks.

Martin made the accusation in the Dáil today after Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald TD raised the issue.

It comes after the government rejected last week a Solidarity-People Before Profits (PBP) motion that called for reinstatement of pay for nursing students and midwives who are on placements during the Covid pandemic. -19.

Raising the issue today, McDonald said “these are not normal times” and read correspondence from nursing students who said they were forced to quit their part-time job due to fear of Covid-19 contamination.

“This creates enormous stress when it comes to paying rent, paying fees, transportation, and possibly supporting a family,” McDonald said.

So there you have it Taoiseach, real work, real lives. The real struggles of our nursing students and midwives, please tell them they will be paid and paid appropriately.

In response to McDonald, Martin said that “there should be no exploitation of any nursing student in any hospital.”

However, he argued that the current nursing education system has been designed so that nursing students receive a degree and are not treated as apprentices in a hospital setting.

“In my opinion, this debate has been very politicized, has been very guilty of short-termism and has been designed to put one group of politicians in one corner and the other in the other corner through a motion, a simplistic motion, which it seeks to solve public service payment and the critical problem of how to better educate medical students, ”he said.

Basically what you’re saying is that we should go back to the learning model, which I don’t think is a good idea. No nurse, not a single nursing student should be exploited.

Throughout all the years of college, nursing students must work without pay to obtain the necessary number of work hours necessary to be fully qualified.

From the fourth year onwards, nurses receive some payment, but a significant amount of their clinical placements are not paid during college.

During the fourth year, students complete a 36-week continuous placement roster and are paid as health service employees.

Martin said that 20 years ago nursing education went from an apprenticeship model to a degree model and that this needed to be protected.

“At the heart of this, it seems to me now, do we want to protect the learning experience of nurses in the degree program or not?” He said.

“I introduced it myself as Minister of Health and it was important in terms of providing a greater degree of respect in terms of the nursing profession within the general hierarchy of health.”

The Taoiseach said the opposition that filed the motion as it did last week was a case of “playing politics.”

“I understand what you were in last week, in terms of filing a motion, setting up the board, going on social media and saying ‘they don’t want to pay, we want to pay’, that’s too simplistic and you know it,” he said. the leader of Sinn Féin.

– With reporting by Orla Dwyer