Newly qualified Irish nurses forced to emigrate for work

A disturbing claim by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has revealed that up to 75 per cent of the 1,500 nurses due to qualify in October will need to emigrate to find permanent jobs.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran announced that a freeze on recruitment in the Irish medical sector plus curtailment of agency staff usage will make finding a job in the health service almost impossible. He adds that the moratorium on employment has been ongoing since 2008 and has resulted in a drop of nursing staff from 39,000 to 34,300.

Between May 2011 and May 2012, more than 2,000 nurses applied to the Board of Nursing for a verification of training and experience certificate enabling them to work outside Ireland. According to Duran, the service is the victim of a triple whammy, with new graduates forced to emigrate, nurses with five years’ experience leaving because they cannot afford mortgages and the many Filipino nurses moving to countries which pay better wages.

At the Working Expo due to be held next week at the RDS, oil and gas-rich Alberta province in Canada is expected to recruit many hundreds of Irish healthcare professionals across the entire field. Specialty workers sought include addiction counsellors, speech and language therapists, recreational therapists, pharmacists and psychiatric nurses as well as doctors.

Alberta Health Services has 1,500 vacancies to fill, according to its senior talent acquisition adviser, Leeann Montpetit, who believes Irish health professionals have similar styles and standards of training to their Canadian counterparts. Salaries, she said, were comparable to those paid in Ireland, but the cost of living in Canada is far lower.