Nurse bills agency over €20,000 to keep family ‘afloat’

A nurse who admitted to billing an agency for work amounting to €20,400 while also being paid by Cork University Hospital, has said she did so to keep her family “afloat”.

Nurse Elaine Mary Houlihan (26) told a fitness to practise inquiry by speaker phone from Hamilton, New Zealand where she now lives, that she used the money to provide for her family and pay bills, the full details of which were only heard in a private session.

“I never spent it on anything extravagant”, she said.

Ms Houlihan admitted she got the money by claiming pay from the agency Nurse on Call, while she was directly employed by the hospital.

She said the deception began after she missed a shift and was worried her pay would be docked when her family desperately needed the money.

She said she felt relief when she was paid for the shift she did not work, but said the family’s needs were such that her deception “snowballed out of control”.

She acknowledged that between March and October 2012 she forged the name of her clinical nurse manager Ann Higgins on timesheets which amounted to €20,400.

Ms Houlihan’s deception was discovered just days before she was due to leave for a new life in New Zealand and the fitness to practise inquiry heard she had immediately admitted her actions. She also pleaded guilty to obtaining the money by deception at Cork District Court .

She said her parents had lent her the money to repay the €20,400 and she was attempting to pay them back working as a care assistant in New Zealand. The inquiry heard her registration as a nurse had been suspended, and she was unable to gain work as a nurse.

Asking to be allowed to resume her career, she told the inquiry she had worked very hard to change. “I know now I am a different person. Even though I know what I did was dishonest but I have changed.”

Ms Houlihan said she had worked hard to make herself “a better person” since arriving in New Zealand and was engaged in voluntary work as well as paid work with a special needs group.

The hearing is continuing.