It is a national scandal that most of the 1,700 nurses graduating this year are being forced to emigrate to get full-time jobs, the largest nursing union in the State said yesterday.
Sheila Dickson, president of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), said the UK's National Health Service (NHS) was coming here and recruiting "whole classes of graduating nurses", just a few years after the Irish health service had to go abroad to recruit nurses to staff the Irish health service.
Around 12,000 nurses from the Philippines, India and other countries were recruited at great expense - at an estimated cost of more than €7,000 ahead - to work here since 2001. The shortages, according to INMO general secretary Liam Doran, were as a result of mistakes in the past when Irish nurses were also forced to go abroad for work.
Now the recruitment embargo in spite of there being a shortage of nurses on wards resulting in bed closures, meant nurses had to go abroad again. He estimates that since January 2008 almost 2,000 have left.
"What is going on is absolute madness. It's short-sighted. It's flawed," he said. Mr Doran urged health minister Mary Harney to implement a "cost neutral" policy recommended by the commission set up to look at reducing nurses hours which would see each graduating nurse getting a two year internship in the Irish health service, which would allow them consolidate their skills and specialise in a particular area.
In 2006, due to a shortage of midwives in the country, a four year degree programme to train midwives was introduced, fast-tracking the training of midwives who previously had to study for a general nursing degree first, before then going on to study midwifery. Ironically the first graduates of this programme cannot find work either, the INMO said.
"We must, in these very difficult times, strike an equal balance between the legitimate expectations of nurses and midwives and their patients and the overall economic situation facing the health service.
"However, the current strategy is doomed to failure as it neglects today's patients, leaves us totally exposed with regard to planning for future needs and ignores the fact that other countries view our newly graduated nurses and midwives as priceless assets rather than a drain on resources," Mr Doran said.