CAO baled out over error but it’ll cost taxpayers €300,000

MAKING amends for the mistaken offer of extra places on a psychiatric nursing course by the Central Applications Office will cost the public about €300,000.

There was good news yesterday for the group of more than 20 students who were told on Tuesday they were offered their places at Letterkenny Institute of Technology in error, just a day after they registered.

After three days of discussions between the college and the North Western Health Board, they were offered their places again yesterday morning.

Chris Cronin from Mayo, one of the 22 students who arrived to begin the course last Monday, was delighted.

“It’s been an awfully long week, but the college and the health board have done an awful lot to help us out,” she said.

“But we’re still angry with the CAO, whose mistake all of this was,” she said.

But while the prospective nurses are delighted, taxpayers will have to fork out when they go on clinical placement in local hospitals in the third year of their course. The Department of Health has assured the North Western Health Board it will provide the funding.

A source said that paying their wages when they spend 12 months as employees of the health board will probably be about €300,000.

Danny Brennan, registrar at Letterkenny IT, said some of the 22 extra students had already deferred starting the course until next year, but they were all now free to resume classes.

“We’ve been working closely with the CAO for years and there’s never been any problem like this. But at the end of the day, everybody should be happy now,” he said.

The CAO has accepted responsibility for the error, after sending out 64 offers instead of 16 to fill the last five places on the psychiatric nursing course.