I thank all of the nurses and midwives we are speaking about this evening. I certainly appreciate them. I thank them for their passion for the job, and for their commitment and dedication. I also recognise that we stood in this House and applauded all of the front-line workers and made comments and statements about nurses and others. Yet, we did not fulfil what is necessary, which is pay and conditions, the proper number of staff and allowing them to perform their functions, which they are very good at. I stand in solidarity with the ambulance drivers today and say we should recognise what they are doing and improve the range of qualifications now in play and ensure they have the numbers to do the job the way we expect them to do it. It is hypocrisy to speak here and for the HSE or Government, whoever is at fault, to not give the appropriate pay and conditions to those we are speaking about. We need to change that radically. St. Luke's in Kilkenny is a level 3 hospital. It is short between 70 and 100 nurses. They use a lot of money to bring them in from the private sector to nurse in that hospital. When I see that, I think of the management and structure in the HSE. It is not good. It is not best practice, and it is not good business for the country. We should be doing a lot more to manage the staff we need and the qualifications we need within the health service. We should be doing an awful lot to support the nurses and midwives financially and in terms of their work arrangements. There is a new hospital ready to be opened in Thomastown. I hear no talk about that in the context of staffing levels. Have they been completed? We need to have fewer promises from Government and politicians with regard to how all of this going to be achieved. We should be dealing with the reality of the crisis that faces nurses, be they in general hospitals or in the mental health setting, but we do not. I would like to see more time given to a discussion about management to deliver what we are speaking about to the front-line workers and to ensure they get the best for their jobs. In his day, Bernard Gloster promised a skills facilitator for St. Luke's in Kilkenny. It never happened, and that is what I am talking about when I talk about promises made. You need to do what you say. You need to ensure the workers and nurses we see on the front line are properly compensated and we need to ensure those who continue to argue about long Covid are answered. They are not just doing it for the fun. Some of these nurses and front-line workers have been very sick following Covid and we have not recognised it. We have pitched them all back to the HSE to work out their deal for their ongoing income. A lot of them are really stressed about all of this. They are suffering depression, anxiety, burnout and so on. We talk about it here. We identify where the problem is but for some reason we refuse to address it. Until such time as these issues are addressed, the Government can stand and be counted as not fulfilling its first obligation, which is to keep its people safe. Nurses and front-line workers deserve better. If the management were any way right, or any good at all, the strikers would not be out there today. That matter would have been dealt with long before it happened. If the Government was in private business, it would look across the range of employees it has and make it super attractive to keep them there, particularly when there is a shortage of skilled staff. That is what is done but it does not seem to be done by Government or the HSE. That needs to be talked about and corrected.

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