The HSE has extended the deadline for its graduate nurse recruitment scheme, while also allowing graduates from 2010 and 2011 to apply.
The scheme aims to hire 1,000 nurses who have graduated in 2012 on pay rates reduced by 20 per cent on previous years. The starting salary will fall from €26,000 to €22,000.
The scheme would offer graduates two years of employment, rather than a permanent position.
HSE director Barry O'Brien said this morning there had been a "very slow level of application"to the scheme.
The low applications numbers shows that graduates are taking part in a boycott of the scheme organised by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, its general secretary Liam Doran said.
"This boycott call will remain in place for whatever application period the HSE lays down," he said. "The HSE decision also confirms that this was never an educational programme, nor an opportunity to consolidate learning, but was always an overt attempt to introduce cut price, yellow pack nursing posts into our health service."
The organisation is asking graduates to continue the boycott until the HSE begins discussions with employees.
Mr Doran said the scheme is “cheap labour” and an insult and attack on the nursing and midwifery professions.
Fianna Fáil health spokesman called on Minister for Health James Reilly to urgently review the terms and conditions for the graduate nurse recruitment scheme
"The fact that the HSE has now decided to expand recruitment to include nurses who graduated in previous years proves their recruitment campaign is failing," he said. "The HSE wants newly qualified nurses to take up two year contracts for 80 per cent of the lowest rate of nurses pay. That's just not fair or sustainable."