Nurses and health workers are staging protests over the issues caused in our health service by the Pay and Numbers Strategy.
This puts a much lower cap on recruitment than is needed. Over 2,000 nursing and midwifery posts have been effectively abolished as they were vacant on 31 December 2023.
Despite the massive budget surplus set aside by the Government, this cost-cutting policy is damaging our health service.
Waiting lists are years long. We are already seeing the trolley crisis starting again which is now an annual occurrence. Now, staff are being forced to cover multiple roles and are being put in unsafe working conditions. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Health workers know the vast majority of Ireland will support their strike action if they win their ballot. Why? Because we are sick of December trolley peaks. We’re sick of the scandals. We’re sick of the underfunded services and the overfunded consultants, developers, and their carousel of spin doctor ministers.
People Before Profit will fully support the health workers because the majority of people in Ireland depend on public healthcare and it’s too important to leave to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leadership again.
Listen to the workers: We need a reliable public health service as much as we need reliable public housing and reliable public education.
When healthcare workers went out on strike in the North over the last few years there was near total approval. It was the same here in 2019. People want their healthcare to work. We need properly funded and staffed preventative care, emergency care, treatment, after-care, reliable testing, mental health services… the list goes on!
