Student nurses demonstrate outside Sligo General Hospital
More than 300 people attended a demonstration by student nurses outside Sligo General Hospital this afternoon, protesting the Government's proposals to cut their pay.
They say the Department of Health is imposing pay reductions in addition to pay cuts announced in the Budget last year.
It is estimated student nurses will receive no pay at all by 2015.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that he could not make a commitment to reverse the decisions made, but said that the would review it, should his party be elected to Government.
"What I say is: I am not giving you a commitment to reverse this, but I am giving you a commitment to review it, if we are in Government," said Mr Kenny.
Sinn Fein Health & Children spokesperson and Cavan-Monaghan candidate Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin expressed his party's support for the student nurses.
"Sinn Féin is committed to reversing the unfair and unjust Government decision to cut the pay of student nurses, and would vote to restore, immediately, the pay of working fourth year student nurses/midwives to 80% of the minimum of the current nurse scale," he said.
"The professions of nursing and midwifery in this State are going through their worst experience since the 1980s due to the cutbacks. The people on the frontline who have to cope with the outcome of the cuts in terms of patient care are the nurses and midwives.
"They carry out that work despite being hampered by a fundamentally flawed system, by mismanagement at government and HSE level and by the current cuts."
