A Waterford TD has said healthcare workers are not being supported, as the country continues to battle through one of its greatest health crisis.
With nurses, doctors, and paramedics fighting on the front line in the wave of record hospital and ICU admittance numbers due to the latest wave of COVID-19, David Cullinane says many of them are also fighting for fair pay and conditions.
Speaking in the Dáil to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane says healthcare workers don’t feel that their work is valued.
"They're very sore about the fact that the investments in ICU weren't made, or in hospital capacity. There are issues with public health specialists - that called off strike action - by the way - and were sore that it wasn't recognised by the Minister (of Health).
"Hospital consultants have pay equality issues, student nurses and midwives have legitimate claims in relation to their pay.
"And they see all of those issues, and the failure to deal with them, as a failure to value the work that they do."
Sinn Féin TD Cullinane says, having spoken to representatives of frontline healthcare workers, they say that they have had enough.
"The anger that is there at the moment from those working on the frontline; that they are dealing with a dire situation.
"And that seething anger that those issues are not being dealt with is really genuine and palpable.
