On Thursday night, the Government voted against a motion to pay student nurses and midwives a modest €14 per hour by 77 votes to 72.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party all voted against a plan to reinstate the same rate of pay that student nurses were briefly given at the start of the pandemic.

There have been around 4,000 student nurses working in the health service during Covid-19. In Ireland, student nurses and midwives are not paid for clinical placements during their first three years and can only receive an allowance of €50 per week. In fourth year, student nurses remain unpaid for the first three months of their clinical placement. For the final 36 weeks of their placement, fourth-year student nurses are paid €9.48 per hour(source, Independent.ie) 

What are we saying to our student nurses, that they are not appreciated, that their work during this pandemic is not valued. This is the reason we lose so many nurses after qualifying, we need to change this, we need to keep our nurses and midwives. We need to pay them fairly for the work they do

Please sign this petition, everyone at some stage of their life needs a nurses help, right now they need you. 

Go raibh míle maith agaibh