The first 31 Filipino nurses have been at Dublin's Mater Hospital for only two weeks, but many have already joined the choir at nearby St Joseph's Catholic Church, where their enthusiasm is being appreciated by the older generation. Others talk jokingly of free time spent bar-hopping, dancing all night, singing on karaoke nights and shopping in Marks & Spencer for clothes to send home to their families in the Philippines - along with large portions of their earnings.
The male and female nurses have been received "very positively" at the Mater, says the hospital's director of nursing Anne Carrigy, but beneath their positive attitudes there are stories of Filipino parents desperately missing young children they left behind to take jobs in Dublin.
Nancy Dimaano (27) has three children, aged two, three and five, who are being looked after by her father back home. "I miss them terribly," she says. She is not alone in being keen to bring her family to Dublin to live permanently. "Ireland is a good Catholic country in which to raise children," she adds.
Trainee nurse Gary Atubo (29) hopes to specialise in neurosurgery. He left behind his three-month-old daughter and his wife, also a nurse, to work at the Mater. Until a few months ago, he and his wife were working together in a Saudi Arabian hospital. Now she is caring for their baby in the Philippines while Gary talks to her every day on his cellphone from Dublin.
At night Gary sleeps alone, like the other Filipino nurses, in the Mater Hospital nurses' home, where accommodation is basic but rent is free for two months and nominal after that, enabling the nurses to save money. But living on Chinese takeaways is becoming a bit boring and Gary would like to be able to cook for himself, so he is thinking of renting an apartment privately.
A splintered family life is seen as an inevitable sacrifice for many young, educated Filipinos who compete in a global employment market.
The Philippines deliberately educates nurses for export, turning out 27,000 more nursing graduates every year than the country needs. Filipino nurses are trained in English using the system States US on four-year degree programmes, before being sent out to work in hospitals around the world: typically Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Singapore, Hong Kong - and now Ireland.
A dedicated government department in the Philippines regulates the training and monitors emigration so that the nurses are not tricked into jobs as nannies and cooks, as has happened in the past.
For Filipinos, the employment market is by necessity a global one and there is a tradition of grandparents caring for young grandchildren while the middle generation works abroad and sends money home for education. When the children enter adulthood and begin earning abroad, the middle generation returns to the Philippines to look after their children's children - and so the cycle continues.
Donny Brennan of healthcare recruitment specialist Kate Cowhig International, which worked with the Mater in recruiting from the Philippines, points out that this lifestyle may seem harsh to us now, but that it was once commonplace here. However, the splitting up of families may no longer be an inevitable sacrifice for the Filipino nurses following Tanaiste, Mary Harney's recent decision to allow workers on "Harney" visas to apply to bring their families to the Republic after a threemonth trial period working in the country. Immigrants with ordinary work visas must wait one year before applying. The possibility of settling permanently here is yet another reason jobs in Dublin appeal to the well-educated and highly skilled nurses of the Philippines.
Filipino nurses can earn 10 times more in the Republic than in the Philippines, where monthly wages range from £160 to £200. Here, all nurses, whatever their nationality, are paid according to a Department of Health-determined basic salary scale starting at £15,762 and rising to £23,014 depending on verified years of experience. In addition, they are being offered opportunities for career advancement in a major teaching hospital and are receiving visas into an EU country - a gateway for future work in the rest of Europe.
Carrigy says she found herself greeted as "a god" when she was in the Philippines to interview applicants. She eventually accepted 70 out of the 300, and says all of them were "excellent". The first group of 31 nurses arrived in Dublin two weeks ago and are in the midst of a mandatory six-week induction programme, monitored by An Bord Altranais. A further 19 Filipino nurses arrived last Saturday, and another 20 are due at the Mater later this year.
But the Mater isn't alone in the global search for nursing staff. In the autumn, Beaumont Hospital will be recruiting at least 60 nurses from the Philippines with the help of Kate Cowhig International. Another recruitment agency, O'Grady Payton, has brought in 250 nurses this year from the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to work in hospitals and nursing homes.
The Filipinos feel that they have been generously received, despite the occasional racist remark from a passer-by, which they shrug off. Educated in many cases by Irish Catholic nuns and priests, Filipinos are generally already familiar with Irish culture. Robert Cortez (27) who listens to the Cranberries, the Corrs, Westlife and U2, says: "It was a childhood dream to come to Ireland. I think I was Irish in a past life."
At the Mater, he will be receiving further training as a cardio-thoracic specialist and would also like to study sports medicine. He has already made an impression by dancing on to the ward. "Most of the patients feel better to see you smile," he explains.
Robert is on a two-year contract and he isn't shy about stating his ambition to meet and marry an Irish woman with her own career. He'll cook, clean and do all the laundry for her as long as she gives him an Irish daughter, he says cheerfully.
Nor are the female nurses adverse to finding Irish mates. Liberty Espiritu (30) - whose name means freedom of spirit - and Marifel Viernes (28) say they would happily settle in Ireland despite the "weird" weather - in the Philippines it remains either sunny or rainy for weeks at a time. Liberty, who is already so senior that she is in the 44 per cent tax bracket, is a specialist theatre nurse experienced in open-heart surgery and wants to train as a specialist in brain surgery while at the Mater.
Marifel, a renal nurse who will train at the Mater to specialise in the care of older people, has already sung solo in St Joseph's Church. She observes that Sunday Mass in Ireland is a less joyous occasion than in the Philippines, where Sunday is a family day and Mass is crowded with people of all ages. She finds the fact that St Joseph's congregation is older "very sad".
While many of the Filipino nurses want to live permanently in Ireland, Carrigy points out that the Filipinos are on two-year contracts and are seen as a short-term solution to the shortage of nurses. As more Irish nurses are trained by the Mater, they will have first priority for jobs there, she says.
It is hoped that the promotional opportunities resulting from the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on Nursing will give nurses a more satisfying career progression. In the past, nurses could be promoted only by entering management and education posts. In the future, there will be more opportunities for nurses to receive promotion while continuing to work clinically with patients. And the initiative to fully fund degree courses for nurses in part-time further education should also invigorate the profession by encouraging nurses to develop specialities.
Encouraging more Irish men and women to become nurses by offering greater career satisfaction is sensible, but at the same time, should we be seeing the Filipino nurses as expendable, short-term solutions to the crisis?
The Filipino nurses I met seemed to be truly dedicated to their work, speaking of the "spiritual" satisfaction it gave them. As Liberty Espiritu says: "There are few jobs where there are no boundaries between people, or where caring for the body and the soul together are so important".
