Hospitals exploring housing staff as accommodation shortages hit recruitment

A number of the country’s major hospitals have spoken to the Minister for Health about the provision of accommodation to their staff as a result of housing having become a major obstacle to the recruitment and retention of nurses, particularly in the bigger urban areas.

Speaking at the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s Conference (INMO) in Killarney on Friday, Stephen Donnelly said he spoke to management at the Mater hospital in Dublin last week about proposals there to provide housing, while he has also been in contact with other hospitals, including Galway University Hospital, about the issue.

“Individual hospitals are now looking at this. I think that’s very positive because I think in the cases of the hospitals that are having the most difficulty in hiring people it is because of the lack of rental accommodation. They’re the ones that really are looking to prioritise this,” he said.

“The proposals are coming to me actually from hospital managers (and) we’ll continue to have those conversations with the department, with the HSE and with the estates team in the HSE to see where we might be able to invest to start creating some of this accommodation.

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“I’ve had a conversation just in the last week with the Mater hospital, where they’re looking at various properties in Dublin close to the hospital that they could either be retrofit to make them appropriate for accommodation, or indeed start to build their own individual blocks.”

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Visiting the conference on Thursday new HSE CEO Bernard Gloster said he had no desire to see a return to the type of accommodation that had previously been provided to student nurses at many hospitals but he said the wider issue was one for government.

Mr Donnelly, however, suggested it would be for the HSE along with the hospitals to take the lead on using a portion of the capital budget for health for the provision of housing. “It would be up to the HSE and the hospitals to put together bids for this kind of accommodation, but certainly that can be looked at as part of the normal estimates process.”

As the Minister was speaking to reporters delegates were unanimously backing a motion that called for his department to provide the funding required for both housing and creche facilities in order to aid recruitment and retention.

Addressing another factor in the issue of staffing levels in his speech to delegates Mr Donnelly said he hoped to be able to have an additional 400 new training places for student nurses this September as part of a wider plan to double the number of those qualifying over the coming years. “It hasn’t got full Government sign off yet, but that’s what I’m working towards,” he said.

A suggestion by the Minister that the INMO did not always help the cause of recruitment by continually highlighting problems in the system without acknowledging more positive developments was rejected by INMO president Karan McGowan, who said nurses were not seeking to be “agitators” but “we have a duty to provide a safe level of care and when we can’t do that we will call it out”.

The union’s general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha, meanwhile, said the impact on nurses of the cost-of-living crisis would have to be reflected in this year’s public sector pay deal. She also suggested there should be scope for portions of the public service to secure pay rises that went beyond the centrally agreed figure.

“We are going to be very clear with the Government parties that we meet. We have a cost-of-living crisis which needs to be addressed. We have an interim payment at the moment which extended the last agreement but we also have money issues that have been neglected.

“The trade unions and the negotiating team from Ictu, of which I am a member, have made it clear to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that we have to look at public pay differently. When there is a claim the answer can’t always be that that’s contrary to the public service agreement and so you can’t progress it. Because what that does is it prevents trade unions making cases for members who have expanded their roles, extended their practice and increased the service they provide to the public service.”