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STUDENT NURSES HAVE been in the headlines recently after the government voted against a motion to pay them for clinical placement during the pandemic.
The motion was rejected by the three parties in government, which was described as “cold-hearted” and a ‘betrayal that won’t be forgotten’ by People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) is currently in talks with the government in relation to student nurses’ pay.
Speaking in the Dáil yesterday afternoon, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin said there should be “no exploitation of any student nurse in any hospital setting”.
Let’s take a look back at the details of student nurse payments and what exactly student nurses do while on clinical placement during their degree.
Are student nurses ever paid?
During their time in college, student nurses are required to work unpaid to get the necessary number of ‘working hours’ needed to become fully qualified.
From fourth year onwards, these nurses receive some payment but a large chunk of their clinical placements are unpaid during the rest of their degree.
Clinical placement takes place in healthcare or related settings such as hospitals.
The placements usually last for 12 weeks in the first three years and take place at different times of the year depending on the college and setting.
The INMO said in March that students nurses and midwives completing unpaid work placements during the pandemic should be paid and protected as employees.
On 26 March, it was confirmed by then-Health Minister Simon Harris that student nurses and midwives completing placements during the pandemic would be paid.
Harris said all student nurses and midwives would be offered contracts as a healthcare assistants (HCAs) and be paid accordingly.
This scheme is no longer in operation. It ceased in August, leading to the Opposition motion that was rejected by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.
Here’s what happened with various groups over the past nine months:
First, second and third year
The placements during these years in college are usually unpaid. However, this changed during the pandemic.
After union negotiations, students in these years on clinical placements were offered temporary contracts and paid on a HCA salary between April and August.
Anyone who completed a placement during this time on these contracts was paid on the scale which starts at €13.82 per hour.
These temporary HCA contracts for first, second and third year students were extended until 31 August. This measure ended at that point and has not since been reinstated so people on placement since then have been unpaid.
Fourth year
In the fourth and final year of their degree, nursing students undertake a 36-week roster of continuous placement and are paid as health service employees.
This internship has traditionally been paid but the payment was reduced during the recession.
Again, the pandemic changed the situation with this payment. The government said fourth-year students on their continuous placement should also be paid on the HCA scale.
This was originally due to be for a three-month period from April to July but was later extended to the end of the students’ internship.
As of 1 October this year, the salary for a student nurse on 36 weeks placement stood at €15,056, according to the INMO. This works out at almost €11 per hour.
Allowances
First to third year students doing nursing or midwifery are entitled to an accommodation allowance of up to €50.79 per week for the duration of their placement.
This is only paid in the instance where it’s necessary for the student to live away from their normal place of residence during the placement.
A review of the student nurses’ allowance is under way and a report will be available in September 2021, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
What happened last week?
Last week, the government voted against a motion to pay student nurses.
The Solidarity-People Before Profit (PBP) motion put forward by TD Mick Barry was defeated by 77 votes to 72.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party all voted against the motion, while opposition parties and groups supported it.
The motion called for the immediate reinstatement of the payment at HCA rate for student nurses and midwives who either were or are on placement during the Covid-19 pandemic, among other measures.
These include:
A similar motion was defeated in a vote earlier this year.
The Taoiseach yesterday described this motion as “simplistic” and designed to be put on social media.
“I understand what you were at last week, in terms of putting up a motion, put up the dashboard, go on social media and say ‘they don’t want to pay we want to pay’, that’s overly simplistic and you know it,” he said to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil.
The government put down a counter motion outlining the current provisions in place regarding the €50.79 weekly accommodation allowance for some on placement among other measures.
Green Party TD Marc Ó Cathasaigh said on Twitter: “Everyone wants to do their best by student nurses, myself included, but this motion wasn’t the way to do it.”
What is the job of a student nurse?
Student nurses complete their placements in a variety of different clinical settings.
A second-year student nurse, Chloe Slevin, wrote a piece for TheJournal.ie last weekend saying:
We are not just students, we are fully integrated into our placements and despite being a student, every patient I have ever met has called me “nurse”. I am sure you can imagine how strange that was to hear at 18, and it is still weird to me now. To my patients, I am more than just a student.
Last month, Richard Boyd Barrett spoke in the Dáil about student nurses who had reached out to him.
“One second year nurse worked six weeks on placement. She worked four days a week in the Rotunda Hospital from 7.30am to 4pm,” he said.
“She also had a job in retail at the weekend where she was being paid absolutely nothing. She worked two weeks in a gynaecology ward from 7.30am to 8.30pm and was not paid a penny.”
It is understood that student nurses in their fourth year 36-week placement are often included in staff rosters. This occasionally happens in other years of placement too.
The INMO said earlier this year: “The purpose of a placement is to train the student, not provide extra resources to the health service.”
The union added that if the health service cannot provide proper training during the Covid-19 crisis, “then they need to change the status of students on placement”.
The Taoiseach made reference to the status of students too, saying that nursing education has been designed so the nursing students receive a degree.
He argued that it would be a backward step for it to return to an apprenticeship scenario where nurses would be in effect working in hospitals.
“At the heart of this, it seems to me now is, do we want to protect the learning experience of nurses on the degree programme or not,” he said
I introduced it myself as Minister for Health and it was important in terms of giving a higher degree of respect in terms of the nursing profession within the overall hierarchy health itself.
“One nurse educator, the head of a particular college, said to me that this is critical from our perspective. Everything we fought for over the past 20 years is now at risk if we go back to thinking it is okay for nurse students to do every type of job in the hospital when they are meant to be learning,” he added.
What has the INMO said recently?
The INMO is in talks with the government on the issue of student nurses not being paid while on placement.
In a statement this week, the union said: “The INMO and our student members are engaged in intensive discussion with government on the issues for student nurses and midwives. We will issue a further statement in the coming days once the next steps have been agreed with our members.”
- With reporting by Rónán Duffy
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If ever there was a reason for a compulsory purchase order.
@Mike O’Flaherty: purchase? Just take it off em. How many babies are buried on those grounds?
@GrahamMManning: As far as is known at present, one Baby is buried on the grounds. The other approximately 900 to 1200 bodies are currently missing and the Sacred Heart nuns claim they have no idea where they are.
@Paul Jude Redmond: but they know where all the money went you can bet
@patrick darcy: I live and grew up down the road from there. Have been around the grounds throughout my childhood and later. Have been there in a professional capacity and have made use of the Creche. My reaction is not knee jerk. Completely agree with a full and thorough inspection of the grounds as well as investigation into the abuse allegedly perpetrated by the nuns and if tis all nonsense (it isn’t) then sell away.
The state should just confiscate it and plenty of other church property along with it. End of.
@GrahamMManning: Would be interesting to know they acquired the land in the first place, see no reason why the Government cannot get involved with a view to confiscating the buildings and land.
Dealing with the nuns’s PR company? Says it all.
@alan: NUNcorp.
I’m amazed the staff are so surprised. Everyone knows the Sacred Hearts are completely mercenary and money grabbing.
And it’s hardly a coincidence that the Inquiry into Mother and Baby homes is due to report in February next year…
@Paul Jude Redmond: exactly,
It’s certainly a case of sell the property and get the money out of Ireland ASAP
Ah the morals or the organised religious institutions…… non existent…
Nuns on the Run
@pat seery: “we don’t tolerate nudity in any shape or form ”
Coltrane dying in the women’s shower
Why did or government invest so much money into a business which was a private organisation
And they run away with the profits
And they can’t afford 24/7
CAT LAB IN WATERFORD
@Kipper O Keeffe: Good question.
THE FIRST time I wrote about the issue of the women who were incarcerated in Magdalene homes was in September 1993. The grounds of the largest such home in the UK or Ireland, High Park in Drumcondra, Dublin, had been sold off to a property developer by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The graveyard was included in the deal – the bodies of the Magdalenes were dug up and re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery. I noticed that at the same time, the sisters had lost a lot of money speculating on the shares of what was Ireland’s first great bubble company, Guinness Peat Aviation. (Fintan O’Toole.The Irish Times June 2010)
Grounds should be confiscated by the guards/state on the grounds of serious crime scene.
Also though Nuns take a vow on poverty !
@Kerrie Roche: Vow of poverty was for the sheeple ,,, not for the Commandant Rev Mother’s.
Lovely Christian work being done. The State should seize the land and kick the order out of the country.
It’s like the storm a few years back in the Dublin mountains and some fallen tree roots exposed some poor soul. The guards were afraid who else the dogs would sniff out. Another ‘Tuam like’ situation. God help us what will the underground imaging will show.
Another proof that privatising the provision of social & health services is a poor choice.
The state will now have to pay a top developer valuation to maintain these services & its e30 million fitting out.
One would expect that such state input to any facility would be based on a sound lease anyway, so how come it wasn’t tied down properly?
They are selling to pay compensation to children who were abused by priests
@Stevie Doran: ya that’s definitely what they’ll be doing with the cash….
@Stevie Doran: God bless your innocence Stevie…
@Stevie Doran: Bertie ‘fond of a dig out’ Ahern gave the religious orders a get-out-of-jail free card on the eve of the 2002 general election capping the liability of all the religious orders at a ridiculously low €128m and going over the head of his then Attorney General Michael McDowell. His then Minister of Finance Charlie McCreevy did not sign it. The State was flying blind. It did not know how many victims there might be – the orders held the records. It did not know the extent or the seriousness of the abuse. In effect, the government signed a blank cheque. Nothing was published or announced, but the deal had been done. The 2002 deal still stands.
@Sean: think you’ll find it’s close to €1billion
https://www.thejournal.ie/religious-abuse-compensation-3278789-Mar2017/%3famp=1
@Stevie Doran: Think it over. The priests had clerical insurance to cover them. It was only when insurance companies worldwide started refusing to pay for the damage caused by child abusers, that parishes started moving money into different bank accounts. It doesn’t seem likely that any order of nuns would top up their funding or bail them out at all. Why would they opt to subsidise some group of abusive priests? Why would you think that?
Who donated the land in the first place, most churches/convents/, industrial schools/orphanages etc are built on land that was practically given to them and built through donations.
Eg the old Galway gaol site was sold to the Bishop for £10 in the 1960s by the council and then built by the donations of the locals, I’m sure this is the case everywhere.
I would be interested to know if anyone knows if this is the case or not???
@John Walsh: They should be handed back to the ‘Community ‘.!!
That land belongs to the state as the taxpayers pumped 30MILLION into it..also NUNS TOOK A VOW OF POVERTY so how can they own anything..Time the Goverment grew a pair and send C.A.B. IN to retrieve our land
@Marianne: the vow of poverty is for the individual nuns, not for the order. Each nun can’t own anything but they have the use of what the order owns.
Blame Lady Arabella Denny,. If she had left things as they were, women and children dying in the streets – we would’nt have this wave of indignation.
See Wikipedia
In June 1767 she founded Magdalen Asylum for Protestant Girls in Leeson Street, which was a home for fallen women or penitent prostitutes, who were provided with accommodation, clothing, food and religious instruction. It was the first charitable institution of its kind in Ireland, and became a model for institutions throughout the country.
@John Lynch: that’s right John..the also stole their babies and sold them to American couples
@John Lynch: Inocence of the Nuns became ‘Corrupted ‘ in Time, as they realized what Gifts in Money they got and the Making of more Money was possible. ‘ Power corrupts, absolute Power Corrupts absolutely’.!!
We have the legislation to take this land back
The criminal assists will take a guys house or car for even selling cannabis but using teen girls a slave labour seems fine with our political class.
Btw the sisters of mercy have have a billion in the bank,,,that they just like to look at…
@David cotter: in fairness the Sisters of Mercy are not the Sisters of Charity!!!!
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: tomato/tomeato
Easy! Take back the 30 million!
I was adopted from there in 1966. I went to see it last year. What’s going to happen to the burial plots if it is sold? And the money should be given to the homeless and people in poverty and all those affected by what went on in Bessboro all those years ago
There’s a lot to be said for giving the state a share of ownership in return for spend large sums on the development and upkeep of institutions like this, or hospitals or schools that are technically owned by private groups providing services to the public.
That’s a bit dodgy all right. It should absolutely be CPO’d off them.
Demolition of every building on those evil grounds should take place and a proper search for those poor dead babies and probably some dead Mother’s also, thier definitely running something to hide, I have experience of that place it’s evil so are the “staff” running it even today.
Innocuous comments showing any support for the church deleted. Demented anti Catholic hate speech comments are left untouched. Fair & balanced from the journal.
@Seamus Mac:
That’s the way it is nowadays. Knowledge gets no attention.
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