I am very glad to be here today to speak on behalf of everybody in Ireland and thank the nurses for the work that they do, particularly on International Nurses Day. It strikes me, on this International Nurses Day, that so many of our nurses are international when you walk around the hospitals. I think between one in five and one in six are from overseas. Many of them come here because they have the opportunity to come here. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with. I have spoken to many nurses and other healthcare professionals who have come from overseas with contracts to the HSE. They have families and they want to bring their families here. It is very difficult to do that. That is something that needs to be reassessed because many of these people are reconsidering their options. If they are talking to others who are considering coming here, they are certainly telling them to think carefully about doing so because it is very difficult for their family to join them. These people are independent. They have their salary, a house and everything they need, yet they find it very difficult. It is an issue that needs to be dealt with. I have personal experience. My daughter, Claire, is a nurse. She has wanted to be a nurse since she was small. As a parent, you always want your children to do well and to be successful in whatever way they can, and to hopefully do better than you do. That is the plan that we always have in life. To be a nurse is something very special. It reflects a caring individual, somebody with humanity and great empathy. They are prepared to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work as well. There are those two sides to it. From speaking to her and others in that profession, it is often not recognised to the level it needs to be, particularly because of the stresses they are under. If I talk to nurses and ask what the one thing is that would change things and make them better, they will say more staff - more nurses, more than likely. That is the big pressure that they are under, in many cases. In many cases, they are working in circumstances where logic would tell you there should be three or four working in a ward but there are only two. They are facing real difficulty. That is one of the big issues that needs to be dealt with. It has been mentioned that there are over 5,000 vacancies in the service. That needs to be addressed. We need to put the pressure on to ensure we can deliver those staff and ensure we can get an adequate health service that deals with all of these issues. Indeed, my daughter, Claire, said to me that as bad and as difficult as it often is for nurses, they are not the first ones at the scene when there is a car accident or when there is somebody in serious trouble having a heart attack. The first people there are the paramedics who have driven an ambulance to get there. Often, in tragic circumstances when a person is deceased, they have to cut them out of the vehicle. The trauma and difficulty of that and the level of skill they have is not recognised by the level of remuneration. That is why they are on strike today. I visited them today in Ballyshannon, Sligo and Carrick-on-Shannon on my way here. Many people in the health services are under huge pressure. If the State wants to celebrate nurses, it needs to celebrate everybody in the health service and ensure it deals with this issue in regard to the ambulance services.

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