Sir, – I was disappointed to read that nurses who had answered the HSE's "On Call for Ireland" campaign were not recruited by the HSE but were to be agency staff employed by CPL Healthcare ("Call for 'precarious' contracts of frontline nurses to be clarified", News, May 2nd).
Reading the report, it seems that the nurses recruited are not entitled to sick leave or compassionate leave.
This decision by the HSE, presumably at the direction of the Minister for Health, suggests to me that, when the pandemic emergency ends, the outgoing Government intends to return the health service to its pre-pandemic state.
If this happens, we will once again see overcrowded emergency departments, as well as the continuation of the long queues for access to healthcare, with the additional deaths that these situations cause.
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I hope that this does not happen. – Yours, etc,
Rev MARTIN O’CONNOR,
Churchtown,
Dublin 14.