International Nurses Day: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12 ============================================================ Marie Sherlock (LAB), Dublin Central The other two questions I have relate to the strategic review of GPs. We have been promised this for a year and a half. It is late. Are we going to see a reference to GP nurses? They provide vaccines and smears. I refer to the new chronic disease management programme. Are we going to see a reference and proper provision for them in the new GP contract? The last thing I want to say is with regard to public health nurses. From what I can see, the number of public health nurses across the country is lower now than it was five years ago. I looked through every region. Every single region has fewer public health nurses than it did five years ago. Why are the HSE and the Department of Health showing such contempt to public health nurses and the delivery of nursing care in our community? That needs to change. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-12