The Joint Committee on Health will meet this morning at 9.30am to discuss the ongoing overcrowding crisis in the hospitals. Representatives from Fórsa are also expected to attend, and you can follow the discussion here.

 
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has also called on the government to improve the working conditions of nurses and midwives across the healthcare service, due to many facing burnout and exhaustion.

Meanwhile, the Government has announced plans for gender pay gap reporting in Ireland. The new regulations will require organisations with over 250 employees to report on their gender pay gap in 2022. More on that here.

And two new statutory codes of practice have been launched to help eliminate pay inequality and tackle workplace harassment and sexual harassment, on foot of measures developed by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.

A national committee is to be set up to examine the impact of the invasion of Ukraine on Irish food security, as some  disruptions to Irish agriculture and supply chains are to be expected. 

And in a shocking move, the United Nations’ Department of Global Communications instructed staff of the international organisation not to refer to the situation in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion” to describe Russia’s attack on its neighbour, which has killed hundreds of civilians and forced two million people to flee the country.

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I’ll sign off today with some simple acts to warm your heart, prams left at a Polish train station for Ukrainian mothers arriving with their children, and a charity that rescues pets left in apartments in Kyiv.