Health service employers have been criticised for continuing to travel abroad in search of nurses to fill vacancies in Irish hospitals at a time when they are offering only a fraction of newly-qualified Irish nurses full-time jobs. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
A survey conducted by the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has found that just a quarter of the 1,200 nurses who qualified in the Republic recently have been offered full-time jobs.
This is despite the fact that there are around 770 nursing vacancies.
The INO's general secretary, Mr Liam Doran, said yesterday a number of hospitals pointed to the Government-imposed employment ceiling in the health sector as the main reason why they couldn't offer all qualifying nurses permanent posts.
"However, we must also point out that many health employers continue to actively recruit abroad while not offering Irish trained nurses permanent employment," he said.
He added that 62 per cent of recently-trained Irish nurses who were offered employment were only offered short-term relief/locum/fixed-term contract positions.
As a result, many of them could be tempted to look overseas for work. This loss, combined with the fact that there will be no nurses qualifying in the Republic next year due to a change over to a nursing degree programme, could exacerbate "the existing crisis" regarding the shortage of nurses and midwives, Mr Doran said.
"In order to arrest this haemorrhage of talented nurses and midwives, we believe it is now imperative that the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Mary Harney, in conjunction with the Minister for Finance, advise all employing authorities that they must offer permanent full-time posts, to all newly-qualified nurses, immediately," he added.