Budget cutbacks will see loss of front-line nursing staff

Colm Stephens, People Before Profit Alliance Local Election Candidate in the North Inner City has learnt that front line staff including nurses are likely to lose their jobs in the Mater Hospital. Unions representing staff in the Hospital are in negotiations with management and are trying to make sure that the affect will be a small as possible. “I have heard from nurses that contract staff who are approaching the end of their contracts have most to fear. They are not being told if they will be kept on or not. This means that nurses from overseas cannot renew their visas and are living with a double uncertainty – in a few weeks they might not have a job and might be forced to leave the country.”

 

I have also spoken today to a mother whose daughter is a student nurse and who will qualify next year. “After I spent thousands in putting my daughter through college, she now has almost no chance of finding a job”, the mother told Colm Stephens.

He noted that the nurses who will lose their jobs are currently paying the full public service levy which was introduced because the Government argued that public servants had job security and ‘gold standard’ pensions. Now many nurses are facing the dole or a flight back home.

He added, “The cutbacks in front-line services in our hospitals come at a time when the Government is actively planning to sink billions of euros of taxpayers’ money into the banks. This shows that Fianna Fáil and the Greens’ priority is the financial health of the bankers and the property developers that are in hock to them rather than the health of the people.”