Show gratitude to nurses by paying a proper wage
THE coronavirus has shown us exactly how invaluable our nurses are to our society. A lot of them have had to work without Personal Protective Equipment and this situation may cost some of them their lives. Is it not now time that we paid these brave people a decent wage, and get our priorities right for once?
A newly qualified nurse in Ireland has a starting wage of about €26,000. It takes about four and a half years and a lot of study and exams. I would imagine UK rates of pay are similar.
Compare that to a brand new TD, with no qualifications needed, no experience needed, who starts off at a salary of over €96,000 – yes, €96,000 – which is due to rise to €100,000 by the end of 2020. Beam me up, Scotty! UK MPs get slightly less.
Nursing is a vocation which requires a lot of dedication. I call on the Irish and British governments to pay our wonderful nurses what they are really worth to our societies.
We must also reassess the wages of doctors, paramedics, ambulance staff, and ancillary workers in hospitals, because they are all one team. I believe the starting wage for newly qualified nurses should be between €35,000 and €40,000 – we can well afford it.
And healthcare workers who contract the coronavirus and die because of their work with the sick should have their funeral expenses paid for by the State. They are our medical soldiers, after all.
John Fair, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
Well done, Leo et al!
ISN’T it lovely to be able to say that I feel a great sense of pride in the way that our Government is handling the Covid-19 crisis. We look around at most of our European neighbours, who have been hemming and hawing ‘will we or won’t we?’, while our lads make firm and strong decisions as to how we will act.
Congratulations to Leo Varadkar, Simon Harris and their team on impeccable leadership.
Then I read a letter from one Ger Tobin in Cork (MoS Letters, March 29) and wonder do we live in the same country? He seems to think that President Michael D Higgins has absolute power over the Government. He asks: ‘Where is our President?’ Well, while you were going on with negativity he was positively sorting out a very critical Constitutional matter with the Seanad, to allow crucial laws to be passed.
Again, through all of this, we have to listen to more negative comments from the Shinners criticising the actions of our leaders and telling us that they would have covered 100% of all wages in the country. Although knowing the source of their funding, that may just be possible.
It’s about time to dispel their delusions of grandeur. The fact that they got 25% of the vote in the last election means that threequarters of the Irish people do not want them and despite all of their negative huffing and puffing no other party wants anything to do with them either.
John K Kenny, address with Editor
Telly evangelism
IT is truly astonishing what lingers in the deep recesses of one’s being and yet governs one’s daily existence.
When the very first television arrived in our house so many years ago, one of my father’s first pronouncements was that Mass on this medium was, like the most famous soap opera of that era
The Riordans, purely fictional. The message was clear.
Over the years, despite many reasons not to do so, I continued to be a massgoer never contemplating, in fact, remaining instinctively apathetic to, any screened version of the celebration.
As Easter Sunday approaches I am stalked by the abrupt resurrection of a childhood chiding. My dilemma: whither to screen or not at all.
Michael Gannon, Kilkenny city.
Covid-19 overkill
THIS near suicidal shutting down of our economy to try to halt the spread of Covid-19, a disease that predominantly causes old and sick people to die just a few weeks or months before they would have passed away anyway, must surely be questioned.
Governments around the world are happily instituting policies that unleash shutdowns that may cause the worst recession ever.
Thousands of businesses are closing. And as our Government steps in to subsidise wages and fund other services, tax revenue will fall.
So expert opinion contrary to the groupthink narrative is urgently relevant.
Experts such as Dr John Ioannidis of Stanford University, who says: ‘Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.’
As regards the publicity given now to SARS-CoV-2 in Italy and the deaths from Covid-19, Israeli physician and former health ministry director general, says that Italy was already known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems.
Charlie Murphy, Ballinteer, Dublin 16.