Charlie McCreevy should give the nurses £200 million to settle their current claim and keep the hospitals open this winter.

Another £100 million could go towards a down payment on an early retirement fund for the profession. Okay, this would be the end of public sector pay policy as we have known it, but it has to end some time and it would die in a good cause. If we make nurses work till they are 65, they will be fighting the patients for the walking frames.

He could spend another £200 million on targeting unemployment blackspots and providing serious education, training and job opportunities for our 95,000 long-term unemployed. This should include doubling the new £25-a-week allowance to £50 a week, which would create a real incentive for the long-term unemployed to enter specific skills training programmes, take advantage of second-chance education or enter the Back to Work programme.

The short-term cost would be high but it would increase enormously the chances of many of these people re-entering the workforce at a time when the economy is suffering skill shortages.

The remaining £247 million could go towards improving child benefit and creating a decent child care infrastructure to support working parents and parents who want to work. The Republic has the most underdeveloped child care structure in the EU. I should add that I am speaking as a working parent, married to a nurse.