HSE hires less than 1% of 'Be on Call' applicants after 73,000 apply

HSE CEO Paul Reid and Anne O’Connor, Chief Operations Officer of the HSE. Picture: Leon Farrel / Photocall Ireland

The HSE’s ‘Be on Call for Ireland’ has come in for renewed criticism after it emerged that just 321 people out of 73,000 applicants have been recruited.

Despite a personnel crisis due to Covid-19, the €600,000 HSE recruitment campaign has filled roles using just 0.4% of the scheme’s applicants.

‘Be on Call’ was one of the earliest recruitment drives of the pandemic, with former medical staff based both at home and abroad urged to make a difference by bolstering the health service’s headcount at a time of national crisis.

New criticism

The latest figures were revealed via a parliamentary question response to independent Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath, who described them as representing “a betrayal by government” to both the applicants who were not successful and the “overworked and stressed staff working in hospitals”.

“Many of those who signed up to this initiative did so on the basis that the Government could be trusted,” Mr McGrath said.

“Many came from as far away as Australia, in a genuine attempt to support Ireland’s darkest hour,” he said adding that in hiring those who had applied amounted to “another illustration by ‘press release’ rather than by action”.

He said that the Government had behaved in a “senseless” manner in not recruiting more staff, and that the approach had been “laid bare in recent weeks from the absolute devastation across the hospital sector”.

In his response to Mr McGrath, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said that a further 680 ‘Be on Call’ candidates are ‘job ready’ and in a position to “take up employment as and when required”.

He said further that roughly 8,750 additional staff have been recruited to date by the HSE’s Health Business Services arm specifically in response to the challenges laid down by the coronavirus pandemic.