‘A quarter of graduate nurses leave for better conditions’

ONE-IN-FOUR nurses who graduated last year have emigrated in search of better working conditions, according to the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO).

Figures from An Bord Altranais, the board charged with registering nurses, shows approximately 25,000 nurses have registered their qualifications in Ireland in the past seven years and up to 9,000 of these nurses came from abroad.

The INO estimates 5,000 nurses have emigrated in recent years .

More than 3,000 nurses have come to Ireland from the Philippines since 1998. However, recruitment of Filipino nurses has dipped since 2001 when 1,775 nurses were hired, compared to 268 last year.

Instead, about 580 nurses were recruited from India last year. The previous year, approximately 240 began work in Ireland.

According to the INO, evidence is growing these newly arrived professionals are also leaving because they are being induced by better pay, conditions and permanent jobs in countries such as the United States, Australia and Britain.

The INO called on Government to reverse the mass emigration of Irish trained nurses to other countries saying: “Ireland does not value them properly.”

“We want an immediate independent review of the pay anomaly which sees registered nurses paid up to 5000 less per annum than social care workers who may hold no qualification.

“We have also, for a long time, sought the introduction of a standard 35-hour week for nursing and midwifery staff, who work five weeks more every year than other professional staff in the health service,” the spokesman said.

Recently, an international group of health workers’ organisations renewed warnings about the effect of migration by doctors and nurses from developing countries to take jobs in richer nations.