Student nurses and midwives are to be paid the €100-per-week pandemic placement grant this academic year, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said.
The grant will be backdated to the beginning of the academic year.
A long-term report has also recommended enhanced travel and subsistence supports for student nurses and midwives.
In a press statement, Donnelly said: “I am extending the Pandemic Placement Grant of €100 per week to all eligible nursing and midwifery students on placement for this academic year. It will be backdated to September 2021. This funding will support students attending their clinical placements.”
“Government is also providing additional support to students needing overnight accommodation away from their normal place of residence in order to attend some of their clinical placements. We are doubling the cap on the vouched accommodation allowance to €100 per week of placement.”
The report published today, known as the McHugh report, sets out a range of recommendations for long-term support for nursing and midwifery students, including the removal of a cap on reimbursements for travel costs. The current cap is €50.79 per week.
The report said: “It is clear that the current cap of €50.79 per week for accommodation is inadequate and needs to be removed so as to allow for repayment of realistic, approved, verified, or vouched expenses in full.”
“It is also evident from information reviewed as part of this review that, in some cases, the above cap was used for all expenses including travel, subsistence and accommodation”, it continued.
The report also recommended that the salary for final-year students on their internship be increased by 12.5 per cent. Interns are currently paid the equivalent of an annual salary of €21,749 to €22,249 for a 36-week placement in a hospital.
The increase represents a return to the rate of pay in 2004, which is equivalent to 80 per cent of the first point of the staff nurse or midwife salary scale.
Donnelly said: “While work is ongoing to progress Mr. Mc Hugh’s specific recommendation, I want to provide additional financial support to intern students.”
“It is important that we support our student nurses and midwives to undertake their clinical placements. I am grateful to Mr. McHugh for undertaking this important piece of work as it has helped my consideration of how we can best support our student nurses and midwives as they continue their undergraduate education.”
Student nurses and midwives staged a protest at the Dáil earlier this week over the ending of the pandemic placement grant.
The grant was introduced on the back of accusations from opposition TDs that student nurses were effectively serving as unpaid staff in hospitals.
Speaking to The University Times at the protest, Catherine O’Connor, the student and new graduates’ officer in the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said: “Students now are going into placement, cases are on the rise but they don’t have the support of that grant.”
At the beginning of May, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said that student nurses and midwives were supposed to be paid the backdated promised pandemic placement grant of €100 by June 1st.
Approximately 4,500 students were deemed eligible for the grant, according to a report by Prof Tom Collins which was commissioned by the Department of Health.
The University Times reported in September that an estimated one third of student nurses and midwives had yet to be paid the backdated grant due to technical and tax difficulties.
In an email statement to this newspaper at the time, O’Connor said: “It’s been delay after delay on this issue. Students have been in contact with us who are still awaiting payment, while others are facing unexpected tax issues, which is adding further delay and complexity.”
