‘A very angry nurse’ calls out government

SIR – The government at the time of our strike two years ago vilified us and told the country we were holding it to ransom. All we were showing was the truth of how dangerous our working environment was.

I have worked as a legal nurse consultant and there are more and more cases of negligence being filed and this is due to dangerously-low staffing numbers, dangerously-low numbers of senior nurses to be able to supervise and the big one being that Irish hospitals can neither recruit adequate competent nurses and, when they have them, they can’t keep them.

Covid has exacerbated and pushed into the faces of everyone how dangerous it is: One nurse in a nursing home or to run a whole ward. Nurses run to exhaustion and now rapidly dropping numbers from sickness and burnout.

It’s simple. More competent well trained nurses. Patching up the holes with people that are unfit to work in that area is never going to work. Open your eyes Micheál and Leo.

To add to the basic lack of respect they have for us, they have done nothing to address childcare for healthcare workers.The first wave was largely managed by a Facebook group set up so people could volunteer their help. As much as we appreciated it we know it wasn’t a long term solution.

Yet, not one Dáil member has done anything to address this.

A very angry nurse.

Debbie Twomey,

Bandon.