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In the smart corner, we have pay raises for fat public service cats vs. puppies, seals, and nursing students.
And in the slow corner, we have boring old legislation and Micheál Martin.
You don’t have to be a political genius to determine which side is most likely to do better in this Dáil fight.
Hit me now Micheál, with Florence Nightingale in my arms!
For nearly two weeks, the smart corner has beaten its government for turning a blind eye to the cynical exploitation of our fledgling ministering angels as they work without pay at the quarantined bedside of dying patients amid a pandemic.
Student evidence certainly seems to confirm it.
But Taoiseach Micheál Martin finds it very hard to believe. It seems that no one in the Health Service Executives knows anything about it, the top brass not surprisingly so far are deaf to the ongoing student protests. The nursing directors of the hospitals are telling Micheál that it is not happening. So could it be true?
If hospitals are using students for unpaid work mislabeled as education, it is a shame and “abuse” and any such case should be reported to the HSE, has been the unshakable opinion of the Taoiseach during the Leaders’ Questions.
“So they can be victims?” Richard Boyd Barrett cleared his throat on Wednesday.
“We will protect the nursing students in question,” Micheál assured, evoking visions of them being forced to change their identities, become abstainers and stop wearing county t-shirts at Copper Face Jack’s until dishonest nursing directors are taken off the streets.
Oh, and the Minister of Health is also investigating this situation that no one suspected could be happening in a health service suffering from a severe shortage of staff in the midst of a pandemic while nursing students are on the streets protesting about it.
In the Dáil, the Taoiseach vigorously resisted accusations from the Opposition that their government deliberately refused to pay these students to work during the Covid crisis. It says the students are in hospitals for clinical internships as part of their college courses. They are there to learn and should not have to complete tasks beyond the course requirements.
To which protesting students might say: You say education: we say exploitation! If not, Paul Murphy has a megaphone in the trunk of his car and he certainly will.
Disgruntled backbenchers
Government deputies are unhappy with the slow way in which the controversy has been handled. The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parliamentary party meetings saw TDs deeply upset by how nursing students have been used to great effect against the Government.
They say the controversy should have been nipped in the bud with a clear message about concrete steps taken to ensure that nursing students who have given so much during the pandemic (much to the credit of dismayed TD voters) are treated fairly.
And then, in the midst of this dispute over the state trying to take advantage of disadvantaged students who provide care, the Government announces a tasty salary increase for a golden group of high public officials, including judges, TD with nixers from the Dáil committee, generously … retired former mandarins ansd retired taoisigh.
You have to wonder if it was an egregiously bad timing, fierce bad luck, or just a complete lack of idea what made them do this.
And when Michael McGrath, the Minister of Reform and Public Expenditure, told Cabinet that the money had to be paid before the end of the year under binding legislation, an anguished groan of “Aaah, for the love of Jaaaaysis” came from all the ministers around the table?
And did anyone ask if there was a possibility of keeping this information a secret for at least another week until the noisy Mary Lou McDonald and the Dáil got up, and then letting it leak out when people were busy getting ready for Christmas?
Maybe they just got on with it in a “great” way.
In the Dáil, Micheál Martin is exhausted trying to explain that the subject of student work is complicated and cannot be reduced to populist phrases from Sinn Féin and Solidarity-People Before Profit TDs for easy political gains. Yet that is exactly what is happening.
On Tuesday, he told Paul Murphy that “public policy is never developed in a hashtag [#paythenurses] and it’s time for people to realize this. ” On Wednesday, he told Murphy’s socialist colleague Mick Barry: “I am of the opinion that your party are opportunistic propagandists.”
It didn’t matter that he had an answer to most of the allegations about his government’s treatment of students. Their salary was not suddenly cut for no reason: They were paid during the first wave of the pandemic because they were formally registered to work in hospitals. This is not the case now. Nursing students and midwives who are unable to do their part-time jobs due to the risk of cross contamination from Covid can benefit from the PUP payment.
He repeatedly said that the fourth-year fees are in line for “an upward increase” shortly, while scholarships and awards are also under new consideration.
But Micheál’s assertion that neither the Government nor the HSE are aware of incidents of students who work long hours and perform tasks well above what their studies and training permits require sounded hollow compared to the personal testimonies that are cited. in the Dáil.
His insistence that students report these cases to the HSE seemed indifferent and distant.
On Wednesday, for the second day in a row, the final step in a legal process to restore public pay levels to well-to-do civil servants is cheerfully merged by the Opposition with the completely separate issue of student nurses and midwives. Who would envy them a few extra shillings for all their work?
“Real work, hard work, heroic work”, as the Sinn Féin leader described it before bitterly pointing out that it always seems very simple “when it comes to coughing for those above”, shelling out “a lot of money for the ministers, for judges. . . but nothing for the nursing students and midwives who have given their blood, sweat and tears for the health and safety of our people ”.
It showed which side Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are one, he thundered.
Fimes
The Taoiseach played his ace card.
Fimes.
Something called Fempi: financial emergency measures in the public interest. Passed in 2008 to cut the public sector wage bill when the recession hit.
“We need the truth here,” she began, promising, before losing her audience. “You campaigned for the Fempi rollback for years. . . from 2013 onwards, which involves payments to the people you just described. You know all that, of course, but you want to twist it and distort the truth in terms of reversing Fempi cuts, because legally in terms of reversing Fempi cuts you cannot distinguish between one group and another. What you can do is delay. ”
And it continued, through all the emotional, passionate, and angry contributions from McDonald, RBB, Murphy, Mick Barry, and Brid Smith. Speaking of the outcome of the bloody Fempi.
He was right, the government has no choice under the law but to implement the final stage of salary restoration to the highest paid group and that moment came this week, after having held it for four years. But who was listening?
There is no fair wage for humble nurses, but rather a big payday for big noises. And an easy target for the opposition.
His government is not protecting the “high rollers,” he angrily explained to Boyd Barrett. The law forced his hand “And you know it very well!”
But, but, but Fempi. . .
It will take more than insisting on the Fempi reversal to reverse this setback.
A serious problem, but they are still in the smart corner.
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