The shortage of nurses in the health service will reach crisis point in 2005 when for the first time no new nurses are due to qualify in the State, it was predicted yesterday.
Due to the change in the structure of nurse training from a three- to a four-year course, there will be no nurses graduating the year after next.
The general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO), Mr Liam Doran, said yesterday that over 1,500 nurses graduate from Irish colleges every year at present, but there were no special initiatives coming on-stream to deal with the shortfall which will occur in 2005. "That is a crisis we have seen coming," he said.
"And when we are not retaining the nurses that are coming out of training and not guaranteeing Filipina nurses that they will be kept on, where does Ireland think it's going to get 1,500 nurses in 2005?" he asked. An Bord Altranais said student nurses working on the wards would help.
There are 4,800 Filipina nurses now employed here, but Mr Doran predicts that up to 500 of them will leave over each of the next three years, to take up more lucrative contracts in Canada and the US, where their partners will also be allowed work.
The shortage of nurses in the State has been highlighted once again by this week's decision by Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin to postpone heart surgery on a two-year-old Limerick girl because there was no intensive care nurse available for her after surgery.
Latest figures from the Health Service Employers' Agency, which conducted a national survey of nursing resources, show 946 nursing posts were vacant in the Irish health service at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Some 520 of the vacancies were in health boards, 328 in the voluntary hospitals and 97 in the learning disability sector. Most vacancies were in the east of the country and in the voluntary hospital sector, while the highest number were at Crumlin hospital, which had 79 vacancies.
While it is still difficult to recruit nurses in general, one of the most difficult types to recruit is the intensive care nurse. Crumlin hospital has vacancies for 45 of them - out of a complement of 115 - and the former director of its ICU unit, Dr David Mannion, said yesterday that the shortage meant only 13 to 14 of the 21 beds in the hospital's intensive care unit could open over the last few years.
"The problem is there is no financial incentive for nursing staff to work in such a highly stressful environment. They had this shortage problem in Toronto a few years back and they solved it with monetary rewards for them, but we have not been able to do that in Ireland," he said.