More than half of nurse entrants are foreigners

MORE than half of all new entrants to the Irish nursing register are foreigners, it was claimed yesterday.

A study by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) found that 57% of those who joined the register in 2006. That compared with just 14% in 2000.

The college said the worrying aspect of that statistic was that most of the migrant nurses interviewed did not intend to stay in this country on a long-term basis, leading to concerns over a potential shortfall in nursing numbers.

“It is clear that overseas-trained nurses, mainly from outside the EU, are now an essential component of the Irish nursing workforce. Indeed the number of non-EU entrants to the register has increased from 14% in 2000, to 57% in 2006,” said researcher Dr Niamh Humphries.

“Over half of the nurses [57%] registering on the Irish nursing register in 2005 and 2006 came from India or the Philippines.

“It was widely expected that overseas nurse recruitment would reduce once the first batch of university-trained nurses graduated in 2006. However, this has not been the case as more migrant nurses registered in Ireland in 2006 than in 2005.”

She said more than half of the migrant nurses who participated in the study said that they intended to emigrate from Ireland in the next five years.

“Given the fact that the Irish health system has clearly become reliant on migrant nurses, we need to identify why some of these nurses plan to leave Ireland, what the consequences of their departure will be and what we can do to encourage them stay,” said Dr Humphreys.

Dave Hughes, deputy general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation, welcomed the research by RCSI, saying it confirmed what his organisation had been saying for some time.

“We told the pay benchmarking body this but it did not take any notice,” he said. “The issue is particularly prevalent in Dublin. In the Mater 50% of all the nurses are non-national. In Crumlin it is up to 80%. There is a very high dependence on non-national nurses.”

He said the large workload and poor pay being given to foreign nurses had the potential to drive them away. Added to that he said the new visa system which costs the nurses €1,500 to register to work in a hospital and a further €1,500 if they moved to another hospital was another significant problem.

“The Health Service Executive needs to improve nurses’ pay and treat them better in order to keep both Irish and non-national staff,” he said.

The HSE said it had no evidence that foreign nurses in its employ wished to return home en masse.