I strongly welcome these statements. I want to express my solidarity and thanks to all the nurses working and training across Ireland right now. For the many thousands of nurses who have been forced to emigrate by the failed policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, I want them to know this: we will work to build the conditions that give them the real choice to return home, with secure housing and a good quality of life. Over the past ten years, our health service has paid a heavy price because those in power have failed to value and respect our nurses. The knowledge and expertise that we have lost to places like Australia are hard to comprehend. While members of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will line up here today to sing the praises of our nurses, it will just be empty words. To be fair, Fine Gael has never hidden how it views our nurses. We all remember the then Minister for Health, Simon Harris, threatening to impose financial penalties on striking nurses, or Leo Varadkar telling us that it is best to keep our hospitals under-resourced, with fewer beds, because, according to him, if a hospital is not under pressure, the staff will kick back and relax. That culture in Fine Gael has ensured that any improvement in working conditions for nurses has had to be dragged out of the Government. It is that critical mindset that shows that Fine Gael simply does not understand what it is like to work as a nurse - the long unsociable hours, the chronic understaffing, the physical demands, the high patient-staff ratios and the harsh workload. That is ever more present in St. Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny. Those who do their best get punished more. We see resources for hospitals going into black holes. Hospitals like St. Luke's Hospital do the very best with what they get, but they get a slap on the wrist for it. They do not get the resources they need. The Government needs to look at this. Despite these harsh conditions, day in, day out, our nurses go above and beyond. They provide a level of warmth, care and support to members of the public who find themselves in need at a time of great vulnerability. That deserves more than praise. It deserves action.

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