On this International Nurses Day, I want to commend our nurses and midwives and thank them for their work and service. Nurses and midwives need more than thanks on the floor of the Dáil. They need better working conditions, they need more staff and they need more resources. That is what would make their jobs easier. We know April was the worst April on record for overcrowding, with 11,000 patients treated on trolleys. It is putting huge strain on nurses, midwives and staff which means really bad outcomes for patients. This needs to change. We have also seen in the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, survey of their members really shocking and startling results: 70% say there is inadequate staffing and skill mix; 60% considered leaving their job in the last month; 40% said work negatively impacted on their psychological well-being; and 25% of nurses and midwives attended a GP due to work-related stress in the past year. The stress and the strain our nurses and midwives are under because of the working conditions should be setting off alarm bells in the Department of Health. It really is not good enough. The Minister for Health says the safe staffing framework is well resourced. I would ask her to talk to nurses, midwives and patients because the experience on the ground does not reflect that. It has never been fully resourced and it needs to be. In other countries, they do this. In Australia, they have enshrined in law that the safe staffing framework must be resourced. We can do that too. Our time today would have been better spent legislating for safe staffing levels in our hospitals instead of talking about and giving thanks to nurses, and actually improve their working conditions like they have done in other countries. We know people are leaving here to go to work in places like Australia where there are better working conditions. The Australian health practitioner regulation agency saw an 86% rise in Irish healthcare workers registering there since 2019. People are moving because of the working conditions. People are leaving the health service because they are under such stress and strain and it really needs to change. I submitted a parliamentary question to the Minister in November on the staffing levels and found out there are over 3,700 funded posts from 2024 and 2025 that have not been filled. Of the 2024 funded posts, 27% remain unfilled. Of the 2025 funded posts, 80% remained unfilled. We provided the funding for them but they have not been filled by the HSE. That is on top of the 3,100 previously unfilled vacant posts. Across the service, 7,000 posts across the HSE are vacant. This is why nurses and midwives are under such stress. It is because there are vacancies right across the service. We know 1,100 funded nursing and midwifery posts remain vacant while the HSE spends €124 million on agency staff. The decision last week on the hiring freeze on non-front-line workers was a knee-jerk reaction done without consultation with workers and unions. It is going to have a big impact. Who is going to do the administrative work? It is going to fall on the clinicians and it is going to really impact on services. While I do welcome the controls on agency spend, we have been here before. We know that since 2020, €4 billion has been spent on agency staff. That is a staggering amount of money. It is poor outcomes for staff, patients and the public purse and it needs to change. We know targets were set for converting agency posts into permanent posts. There was meant to be 960 conversions over 2024 and 2025. However, the Department and the HSE fell 132 posts short of that, 77 of which were in nursing and midwifery. Converting those posts into permanent posts is a basic thing that could be done. It is a staggering amount of money spent on agency staff. That money should be spent on filling these permanent posts, improving the services, resourcing our health service and it is not being done. Crucially, what needs to happen is that we need a multi-annual budget for the health service. Since 2016 it has been promised time and again, Government after Government, but we have not had it. It would lead to better planning, more sustainability and we would not have this knee-jerk reaction of pausing recruitment and stopping hiring. If you were going to buy a car, you would ask if you could pay off the loan over three or four years. You would not think of one year at a time. We need to have better planning for our health service and we need a real guarantee from the Minister that there will not be a freeze on front-line workers. I would love the Minister to make that commitment on the floor of the Dáil and say that this will not be extended to front-line workers. Ultimately, we need to have those safe staffing levels. That should be the guiding benchmark in terms of recruitment for our staff. That would have the biggest impact on nurses and midwives.

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