Knock-on effect of Nurses pay claim

The media, RTÉ in particular, are very poor at challenging the “accepted wisdom”. The INMO agreed to a public sector wage deal. Now they want to break the deal. If the Government cave in, we have already seen other Public Sector Unions say that they will seek parity. So the additional cost of giving the nurses a 12% increase - €180m - will be dwarfed by other Unions seeking to the same deal.
So all those vox-pop people offering support to nurses need to be asked if they are willing to pay more tax to pay the €180m.
The Health Service is “Angola”, it seems impossible to manage due in no small part to all the vested interests. The INMO want more nurses but oppose recruiting “theatre assistants” who could release fully qualified nurses to more Ward duties. We all know of the difficulties with Consultants. The PS Unions tend to be more focused on maintaining their relative position viz-a-viz other Unions than seeking improvement in services.
Yes Nurses do a wonderful, job. Yes the system is chaotic. But simply increasing nurses pay by 12% won’t solve the problems.
 
There was a husband of a nurse on the Sean O'Rourke show this morning. Said his wife regularly works a coupe of extra hours overtime each day to help out and gets no overtime. Was supposed to get lieu days under some agreement but that wasn't honoured by the HSE.
Don't know how accurate or not that is, but it went out on national radio.
 
Conan said:
So the additional cost of giving the nurses a 12% increase - €180m - will be dwarfed by other Unions seeking to the same deal.
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The Govt are saying the 12% pay rise equates to €300m, not €180m
 

RTE are overtly pro public sector
 

Rang up the Galway clinic today seeking an appointment with a rheumatologist, need another steroid injection in my foot which I injured last June, secretary casually told me I might get appointment with one of the two available within two months if I was lucky and a cancellation happened, 240 euro, imagine how long the wait is in the public sphere ?
 
The GP's are out telling lies again I see.

They say that there is a shortage of GP's. That is patently untrue.
They also said that about half of all graduates emigrate due to cuts in funding since the crash. That is also a lie.

To address the first lie; there are about 200 GP graduates enter the system each year. Two thirds of those are women. The vast majority of them work part time and so they only add up to 110 full time GP's. The problem isn't that there aren't enough GP's. The problem is that they are so lazy and/or over paid that they only work a half day.

To address the second lie; about one third of medical graduates are foreign students who were never going to stay in this country, no matter how much they were going to be paid. In many cases their country paid for them to train on the proviso that they went home to work for X number of years after they graduate. The GP's know this but choose to lie about it.

If Taxi drivers were lying like this the media would call them out. Why do people who work in the medical industry get a free ride, be they nurses, doctors or anyone else who is customer facing?
 
This is the kind of conversation we need more of,
 
Might be a good idea for the goverment to get newly qualified Irish nurses and doctors to work in Ireland for at least 2/3 years as part of their training after their qualification. As far as I can see there's this sense of adventure in their heads after qualifying with most already with plans for going abroad but they're saying it's because they won't get enough money. Some tax payers might like to call it pay back time.
 

Let's do it with all 3rd Level Qualificants. Why discriminate against Nurses only?
 
noproblem said:
Might be a good idea for the goverment to get newly qualified Irish nurses and doctors to work in Ireland for at least 2/3 years as part of their training after their qualification.
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Many of the doctors are paying significant sums to come to Ireland for their training, imposing such controls might kill that cash cow. Many Irish graduates across all disciplines like to take a year out to travel directly or shortly after qualification. Of course, the stats published on those leaving don't make any reference to the number that return within a year or two.
 

I did say "Irish".
 
Leo said:
I would however like to see a little more honesty about the fact that most of them come back.
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And, in the case of doctors, many were never going to stay here because they aren't from here in the first place. They pay around €50,000 a year to the universities for the privenage. It just shows how much we invest in the training of our doctors. By the time they graduate the people of Ireland have invested about a third of a million in them. A little gratitude from them would be nice.
 
Create more medical schools. End the closed shop that only lets people on 600+ points or whatever get into studying to become a doctor. Produce 600 doctors a year, not 200 and don't.
I never hear the good doctors suggest that, I wonder why?
 

I'm open to correction but I'm pretty sure I read an article by colm mc carthy several years ago where he claimed there is a cap on the number of GP, s who can set up a practice so as to keep a floor under fees ?

One thing I'm sure of is the GP sector are resistant to expanding their role in primary care as it involves investing heavily, in many Western countries, you can have an xray in a GP clinic, thus limiting the number of people who need to attend hospital, Irish GP, s invest in a stethoscope and a few magazines for the waiting room, everything else is treating the common cold or else referring onwards to hospital
 
Very, very, true. Had an awful throat infection in Turkey some years ago and had to find a Dr. A local told me to go to a Turkish Dr's surgery, actually came with me to the door. Met by a nurse, spoke good English and was lovely and efficient, told me i'd have to wait about 30 mins. Dr walked out to greet me just as she spoke, he also had good English, told nurse to take bloods and explained to me that I would be put lying on a bed until he could get back to me and by then he would have blood results. Aprox 30 mins later he was back, with full diagnosis and medication and very kind to me, didn't want to let me go until I felt a bit better. Ok, it did cost me €175 and yes, they took Euro. My point is that this Dr in a small Turkish town had all the equipment in his surgery, he could also have taken X-Rays if needed. Irish GP's by comparison are tight and one can safely say very limited in what they have in their surgeries. Maybe they need a good wake up call and people should let them know that a hell of a lot more is expected off them for what they charge. Time when the professionals could pull the wool over peoples eyes should be long gone.
Perhaps it's time for the ordinary Joe Soap to go on strike and tell everyone complaining about how good they have it.
 
I'm sure Irish GP's would be more than happy to expand their services... as long as someone else paid for it. They would of course take all the income for themselves but the taxpayer would have to stump up for the capital expenditure.
Of course GP's already get grants for capital items, grants to pay the salaries of their staff and very generous pensions. When they are listing off the money they get per medical card patient they tend to not mention those extras. Strange, that.
This list shows payments to GP's nationally. The first column shows what the GP got paid. The second shows the total including "practice supports". Note; your GP doesn't have to have a GMS (Medical Card) list to receive payments as they get money for smear tests, pre and post-natal care etc. The list does not include their private patient income.
If you download it and right-click you should be able to search for your own GP. Remember that Practice Income is not the same as personal income but for those who run their business out of a grotty room over a shop or a little extension at the side of their house their overheads will be very low. For those with a GMS list these payments do not include their very generous pension.
 
Delboy said:
Create more medical schools. End the closed shop that only lets people on 600+ points or whatever get into studying to become a doctor. Produce 600 doctors a year, not 200 and don't.
I never hear the good doctors suggest that, I wonder why?
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Ireland actually produces the highest number of medical graduates per capita in the OECD!

The issue is that EEA students (who are mainly Irish) get an incredibly expensive education for just €3,300 a year for six years. I haven't checked the numbers recently but the taxpayer will pay something like a quarter of a million euros for a medicine degree on top of what the student pays in fees.

At the end they have to work hard, but no doctor working full time in Ireland is outside the top 10% of income earners by the age of 35, and many will make it to the top 1%. Yes, they will pay a lot of tax, but there is a good case for making them pay a lot in extra fees too, particularly given that a significant minority will emigrate, make a lot of money abroad and not pay tax in Ireland.
 
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