Recruitment group TTM Healthcare, led by a former Irish national boxing champion Brian Crowley, is set for a knock-out year in 2014 with revenues expected to surge by 40% to €40m.

The country’s largest nursing union has warned companies with agency nurses that they have no right to impose the terms of the Haddington Road Agreement on those nurses.

Five firms providing agency workers to the HSE were paid €123m last year — with two sharing an almost €87m payout.

A firm supplying agency staff to the HSE was paid over €29m last year.

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) spent almost €45 million hiring agency staff to fill vacancies in the first five months of last year, more than three years into its ban on filling permanent posts.

THERE is a maddening predisposition in public service agencies to spend taxpayers’ money on outside companies and consultants rather than rely on their own resources, especially when those resources are readily available.