Committee told Ireland's nurse ratio above EU average

There are proportionately more nurses in Ireland than in many other countries in Europe, Michael Scanlan, the secretary general of the Department of Health, told a Dáil committee yesterday.

Department of Health figures reveal that the average ratio of nurses per 1,000 population in the OECD was 8.1.

The average number of nurses per 1,000 population in the EU was 8.5, while a recent Fás study on practising nurses in Ireland showed that there were 12.2 per 1,000.

Committee chairman Michael Noonan said it was "a dangerous road" for Mr Scanlan to be going down in suggesting there were too many nurses.

Mr Scanlan said he was not making any judgment, but it was valid for the Department of Health to point out that the ratio of nurses here seemed to be higher than elsewhere.

Under questioning from Fianna Fáil deputy Michael Smith, he confirmed that the number of staff working in the health service had increased by 45 per cent between 1997 and 2002.

Mr Noonan said it appeared that out of a national workforce of 1.9 million, roughly 100,000 were employed in the public health service.

The health budget had tripled since 1997, one person in every 19 in the country was now employed in the sector yet the service was still hopeless.

He said that as minister for health in the mid-1990s, the department believed that the problems could be solved if additional money or additional staffing were provided. However this had proven not to be the case.

Mr Scanlan said he would not accept that the service was hopeless. He accepted that huge investment had been made in health.

Where this investment had gone "bears looking at and thinking about".

Asked about the health service spending millions from its capital budget on new buildings and then having no money to staff them, Mr Scanlan said he believed the staffing issues should be considered from the very start of planning for new developments.

Meanwhile the committee also heard that a building in Co Carlow bought for €1.3 million by the Department of Justice five years ago to accommodate asylum seekers and subsequently transferred to the health services was now valued at only €500,000.

Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness said about €600,000 had also been spent on insuring and securing the premises at Myshall.