Nurses need our support
Columnists and politicians have rounded on the nurses this week as expectations of an impending strike mount. The Minister for Health and Children, Brian Cowen, waved a reproving finger. Such action, he said, ``is in direct breach of the industrial peace clause of Partnership 2000''.
The 26-County government did not seem so concerned when they announced the planned scrappage of 10,000 Community Employment Scheme jobs, in direct breach of Partnership 2000's plans for an extra 10,000 community workers. Indeed, their concern recently has focused on keeping the 120 secret Ansbacher accountholder names in the shadows. There is a sickening irony here.
While Irish nurses are overworked and underpaid, white collar crime continues to rob the exchequer of millions of pounds. The public sector has been told by the government, and in successive social partnership deals, that its members must suffer the brunt of economic expediency, and that the business sector are, of course, doing the same.
Senior counsel for those wealthy business people appearing before the various tribunals and inquiries of recent years receive thousands of pounds every week from state coffers. Yet the idea of pay rises for public sector workers seems to escape the mindsets of those who have allowed the `golden circle' to prosper.
When government representatives say that pay demands from nurses are unreasonable, we must remember that they are the very people who have supported amnesties for millionaire tax evaders and who have failed to hunt down, or even seriously impede upon the activities of those who have engaged in fraudulent banking transactions.
The nurses need our support. They are fighting for a share of the `Celtic Tiger'. A much more modest share than government TDs plan to award themselves.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)