Rot always starts from the top down. We need proper accountability for our politicians. When they can just be shuffled to another cabinet position with no loss of earnings every time they make a balls of things and destroy a public service, what incentive is there for them to do a good job?

We hold the people running the country to lower standards than we do people earning minimum wage in McDonalds.

@Matthew Kanoff: nurses don’t want to return home. Why would you come back to earn less, work infinitely harder in a tougher environment .

@Alexandra Ni Longain: my sentiments exactly. They won’t get 1200 nurses. No one wants to go work for them.

@Alexandra Ni Longain: Unfortunately we’re doomed to be back here again in another 12 months when it becomes obvious to all but those negotiating these agreements that there isn’t 1,200 nurses willing to work in the HSE.
As I type this I’m aware that most hospitals are currently recruiting nursing staff abroad, even as about 1,200 Irish nurses will graduate from universities this year. Isn’t that an amazing figure? They won’t, however, slot into the promised jobs negotiated in this agreement, the majority will follow the 1,200 who graduated every other year, they’ll emigrate.
What needs to be addressed, and isn’t, is why we have such difficulty finding nurses, why our graduate nurses would rather emigrate than work in their own Health Service? Why the turnover of nursing staff in our ED Departments, ICU and Dialysis departments has gone beyond crisis point and virtually every hospital has positions left unfilled.
An empty promise to pluck 1,200 additional nurses out of thin air, “Harry Potter” style is, frankly, condescending, insulting and just deferring the problem again.

@Alexandra Ni Longain: india and philipines. have you not been in the hospitals here the last few years?

@Arthur Wells: Staff from these countries, and more, like Poland, Spain etc. are filling some of the empty nursing positions in our hospitals, yet still many more are left unfilled.
This still doesn’t answer where an additional 1,200 nursing positions are going to come from if there are already dozens of unfulfilled positions in every hospital in the country, especially in specialist roles. Nor does it answer the question of why so many nursing graduates every year would prefer to emigrate than work in our Health Service, why so many specialist roles are unfilled, why so many young, inexperienced, unqualified staff are being shoved into ED Departments because there is nobody else.

@Jed I. Knight: Because the economy is tanked here, public infrastructure sucks, houses prices are through the roof and there is no great career prospects here.

Sadly, this would result in a lot of ambitious young doctor and nurse graduates who see the writing clearly on the wall and are emigrating en masse whenever possible and able to better pastures (i.e. Australia and the likes).

So the problem is actually multifold and involve both the hospitals and the wider country: how to create a conducive career and economic environment to retain these talent and not let it drain elsewhere?

@Elizabeth W: One of the few groups that would get mass support if they did decide to take industrial action. Respect to all in the profession. I don’t know how you do it!

@Elizabeth W: nurses care too much about their patients? These are the same nurses whose solution to A & E overcrowding was 2 extra days holidays?
Nursing unions are just as self entitled as any other union.

@Soccer T’s: I have a nurse friend who has 4 kids and took 4 months off for “back trouble for 3 of those kids during pregnancy. She does it cos she gets paid leave. They all do it she says. Nurses know how to milk the system. They aren’t saints like some make out they are

@Sinead Hanley: feck off! What do you know about nursing on the front line? I’ve been nursing 22 years and have only been sick when I had 2 hope replaced! Get your facts straight. Most nurses go sick when they need to. Besides, we only get 4 months sick pay, hardly worth milking it…

@Ann-Marie Cronin: Don’t you know that every idiot these days are experts on what people in the public sector do.

@John S: You’re preaching to the converted there with regards unions. Nurses do care about their patients and until you’ve sat down and spoken to an utterly exhausted (physically & mentally) nurse you can’t argue otherwise. They work upto 13/14 hrs a day sometimes with no breaks. The extra hours they do are done free of charge because good luck to getting time back. There could be two nurses and a carer looking after up to 30 pts and their safety concerns fall on deaf ears. The HSE say they’ll hire more 1200 nurses, they won’t find 1200 nurse that want to work for them. Until they sort out the top, they’ll never be able to fix it at ward level.

@Elizabeth W: It’s not just the top that they need to sort out unfortunately. At some point nurses will have to accept some personal responsibility for the position that they find themselves in. The people who work on the frontline are fully familiar with the unsafe working conditions, the years of broken promises and the ongoing difficulties with recruitment and retention. In voting by a 82% margin to accept this deal, the majority also think that they are going to conjure up these extra 1,200 nurses.

@Elizabeth W: I agree with you. Nurses are the heart and soul of our struggling health service. I agree nurses deserve better albeit without a strike being necessary. There are too many agency nurses now and the state won’t fund enough long term nursing jobs.

@Elizabeth W: try being an intern doctor with all the same problems but less pay than nurses and have to take care of multiple wards while working more than 24 hours a day at least twice a week.

@Alan McCartney: Who do you think I am? The Queen of England. “And what do you do?” They wonder around there all day every day with a clip board in their hand basically getting in the way of the doctors and nurses. I’m not suggesting they’re not doing what they’re being paid to do, the question is, is the job they do actually necessary.