The Government has quietly shelved the graduate nursing scheme, which required newly qualified staff to work for up to three years on a reduced salary.
Although no formal announcement has been made, the scheme has been allowed to “fizzle out,” one source acknowledged.
Launched by former minister for health James Reilly in 2012, the scheme originally provided for 1,000 places to be filled by newly qualified nurses.
However, it was boycotted by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and never managed to fill more than half the available places.
Speakers at the INMO annual conference in Trim, Co Meath, hailed the shelving of the “flawed and demeaning” graduate programme, under which students nurses were paid 20 per cent less than their colleagues for up to three years.
Under the scheme, new graduates were paid €22,000 in the first 12 months, compared to the regular starting wage of €26,000.
The scheme has been blamed for driving young nurses out of the State and into health services in the UK and Australia, where pay and conditions are considerably better.
Gobnait Magner, from Cork, described the scheme as "damaging, insulting and denigrating" and said Ireland was "educating nurses for emigration".
Skilled and experienced nurses were “haemorrhaging” from the health system and “like was not being replaced with like,” she said.
Nurses expect a clear timetable for full pay restoration, INMO president Claire Mahon told the conference.
“The Government showed no patience, no understanding and no awareness when, on three separate occasions over a five-year period, it demanded immediate, draconian cuts in the pay and conditions of nurses and midwives and other public servants.”
She said nurses had suffered a 7 per cent pay cut, a 7 per cent pension levy and cuts to shift pay equivalent to 2 per cent of pay.
The Government must immediately move to restore the time and a one-sixth premium for working between 6-8pm, she added.
“In addition to our money back, we also want and will not rest until we get a 37 hour week like everyone else.”
