Around 100 people assembled at the Dáil this afternoon to protest the decision to scrap the pandemic placement grant for student nurses and midwives.
Attendees held signs saying “why are nurses priceless but penniless?” and “education not exploitation”.
Speaking to The University Times, Catherine O’Connor, the student and new graduates’ officer in the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said that students were no longer being paid the pandemic placement grant of €100 per week, despite a recommendation to do so.
“Interns last year were being paid at the healthcare assistant rate of pay for a short period of time, but that was then discontinued without any consultations with anyone”, O’Connor said.
“And students had been sent in at the height of the pandemic last year, January when cases were at their highest … The placement pandemic grant, which was recommended by the Collins report last year to the short term support recommended that the grants be in place until the end of the pandemic but the HSE limited that to the 2021/21 academic year.”
The protest was organised on foot of delays to the publication of the McHugh report, which examined pay and allowances for student nurses and midwives.
“Students now are going into placement, cases are on the rise but they don’t have the support of that grant”, she added.
The report was received by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly earlier this summer but has yet to be published.
Sinead O’Grady, a third-year nursing student who attended the protest told this newspaper: “I’m advised not to work from cross contamination. How am I meant to pay my fees?”
“I’m a mature student, I’ve household bills to pay. It’s just financially crippling”, O’Grady said. The pandemic placement grant, she added, “was only €100 per academic per placement week, but it made such a difference. It was the difference between working and not working for us”.
Sinn Féin’s Higher Education Spokesperson Rose Conway-Walsh told The University Times at the protest that “we have to have a permanent solution to this, but it’s not just the pay that we’re talking about”.
“[If] somebody works”, she said, “they should get paid”.
“The WHO has said there is going to be a severe shortage of nurses – we need to look at why.”
The Irish Times reported today that fourth-year nursing students are to receive an increase in payments of about 12.5 per cent for their internship under proposals to be put forward by the minister for health.
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.”
