No jobs in Ireland for our new nurses
BLEAK: Hundreds of graduates will emigrate, warns INO
Library/Reuters
A nurse treats a young patient.
Hundreds of newly graduated nurses will be jobless and left with no choice but to emigrate this year, the Irish Nurses Organisation warned.
"It's probably the worst scene that has existed for the last decade in the health service," said INO general secretary Liam Doran.
"Hundreds will be emigrating," he said.
Mr Doran said that this expertise is being lost, even though the taxpayer has funded their training programme for the last four years.
"Our estimate is that 25-30pc of those are being offered jobs."
In addition, he said that less people have applied for nursing in the CAO this year since the embargo on recruitment was announced, as they are aware of the difficulty of securing a job.
Mr Doran said that while the newly graduated nurses are being refused jobs by the HSE, the demand for them is increasing worldwide.
"Not only do we need to fill these posts, we need to expand services," he said.
"For the last 13 months the number of nurses employed in the health service has reduced by about 1300.
Staffing
"Figures say that about 39,000 nurses were employed last year but now there are only 37,700.
"We've hit this very bleak wall," he said. "We're losing posts and not properly staffing services in the health system.
"There's plenty of work and it's a national scandal," he said.
Mr Doran said that the nurses will get work in every other country.
"America has said that they'll employ 600,000 more nurses in the next six years. You could be working in the morning in America," he added.
Mr Doran says that his organisation has been involved in talks with the HSE for the past three months and they've been trying to extract the greatest amount of posts for qualified nurses.
"The current policy which is being driven solely by money will lead to an acute shortage," he said. "The health service will be crippled," he added.
The HSE has said that the recruitment freeze has been lifted since January.
Meanwhile, Irish medical doctors are being lured to Australia by more flexible rosters and less onerous working hours by recruitment agencies.
- Geraldine Gittens
