The report of the Commission on Nursing "overlooks the most serious issues facing student nurses in Ireland today", student representatives argue.
Darren McCallig, USI's education officer, welcomes the broad thrust of the report but says it skirts a key fact: student nurses in the fourth year of the nursing-degree programme "are the only full-time third-level students in the State who must pay tuition fees".
At the moment, such students in NUI Galway pay tuition fees and are ineligible for a means-tested third-level maintenance grant - or the non means-tested £3,000 grant that nursing-diploma students receive. In the first three years of the course, when they are studying for a diploma, the students are entitled to the grant.
The report recommends a forum to oversee the transition of nurses from the present diploma model to a fully integrated degree model. This would entitle students of a nursing degree to receive a means-tested maintenance grant. One year of the degree programme would be spent on the wards, where students would receive 80 per cent of the basic staffnurse salary while on placement.
However, the forum is expected to report in the year 2000, with degree programmes commencing in 2002, leaving degree students without a remedy - and without a fourth-year grant - in the short term.
