Calls for greater protections for healthcare staff after recent racist attacks
Healthcare workers should not be afraid to travel to and from their workplaces due to the threat of racially-motivated attacks, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said.
The union has called for more robust protections for internationally educated healthcare staff after reports of attacks on people of colour.
These include an Irish-born doctor of Pakistani origin who was racially abused by a group of children, including one as young as 10 years old, outside a shopping centre last week.
Dr Taimoor Salman, a medical registrar at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, told the Irish Independent that a group of children shouted abusive remarks towards him in a ‘broken Indian accent’.
Dr Salman, whose parents were born in Pakistan, went to primary school in Navan. He said that as a child, he never experienced any racism.
However, he now believes that a recent surge in hatred towards people of colour means that he no longer feels it is safe to walk down a quiet street at night on his own.
Yesterday the INMO’s deputy general secretary said that the 35,500 nurses and midwives who come to work in Ireland from other parts of the world ‘should not be afraid to go to and from their workplaces or anywhere else in their communities because of the disgraceful actions of some.’
Edward Mathews added: “Recent horrific attacks on members of the Indian community in Ireland should be condemned. There must be a robust policing response to racially motivated abuse and attacks. We do not want Ireland to be a place where nurses and midwives are afraid to work.
“Providing more robust protections would go a long way to making internationally educated nurses and midwives feel safe. Everyone should have the right to work in an environment free from abuse or harassment of any kind, and to feel safe in their community.”
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One, Master of the Rotunda Hospital, Prof Sean Daly, said the riots seen in Dublin in November 2023, which took place after a knife attack that left a child critically injured, had a ‘huge effect’ on staff in the north Dublin maternity hospital.
“First and foremost because they ran to try to help the poor little girl who had been attacked, but secondarily, the riots just brought everything into sharp focus that people are being targeted because they are not what has traditionally been called ‘Irish’.
“We have a lot of staff who were very anxious around that time, and we ended up sending taxis out to pick people up and bring them in because they didn’t feel safe.”
