Health department’s figures on nurses ‘wrong’

FIGURES used by the head of the Department of Health to suggest that Ireland has too many nurses are wrong, the Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) says.

The department’s secretary general, Michael Scanlan, told a Dáil committee this week that Ireland’s nurse ratio was above the EU average.

Mr Scanlon told a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee that the average number of nurses per 1,000 population in the EU was 8.5, while a recent FÁS study on practicing nurses in Ireland showed that there were 12.2 per 1,000.