'Be on Call' pandemic campaign hires just 328 of 73,000 applicants

Be on Call scheme, launched in March 2020, asked health professionals who were abroad or no longer in the system to return at a time of national crisis. Picture: Pexels

The Be on Call for Ireland campaign launched at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic has cost more than €900,000 to employ just 328 of the 73,000 people who applied for roles.

Overall, including agency payroll costs, the scheme has racked up €7.6m in spending including recruitment, digital development and occupational health clearances.

The scheme, launched in March 2020, asked health professionals who were abroad or no longer in the system to return at a time of national crisis.

It was just one of the HSE's recruitment campaigns, but the high-profile and massive amount of applications it received has increased focus on it. In a response to the Oireachtas Health Committee seen by the Irish Examiner, the HSE said the scheme had received 73,330 applicants, but had employed just 328.

About 27,000 applicants were already working in healthcare and the number "of candidates who indicated they were available to work, and had the relevant experience needed by the services at that time, was approximately 2,000", the response said. Of those, 126 were appointed to hospitals, 73 to community health organisations, and 129 to public health and other organisations.

The response said the process had proved to be a useful database of people for contact tracing and swabbing roles, as well as potential roles in mass vaccinations.

"Although a relatively small number were appointed, the database has provided a rich resource for other initiatives as they developed – eg contact tracers, community swabbers and more recently over 20,000 contacts were made to candidates on the database to alert them to the National Vaccination Campaign."

A response to the committee from Health Business Ireland, the HSE's business arm, said a number of people who had received clearance had withdrawn from the process.

Of the current 713 job-ready candidates, 275 have unsubscribed after they attained full clearances to return to employment or for personal reasons. These candidates can re-subscribe at any time and they retain their full recruitment clearances."

Sinn Féin's health spokesperson David Cullinane said the initiative had been an expensive failure.

"Only a fifth of the qualified and available workers who applied through Be on Call have been offered a job," he said. "There are at least 349 more workers available with full clearance, and another 700 who have been in the clearance process for months on end.

"We are told they will be offered a job when they become available, but that does not stack up. 

Our frontline healthcare are absolutely exhausted, unable to take breaks or leave, and suffering from fatigue. Yet we have hundreds of healthcare professionals who are willing to work sitting on a list and not being offered work."

He said there was a lack of staff in testing and tracing. 

"This demonstrates a total lack of urgency and a wasted opportunity," he added.

A parliamentary question response from the HSE to Mr Cullinane showed that in February, Ireland was well below its targets of 1,000 staff each in both swabbing and contact tracing. It showed there were 749 and 828 in the respective disciplines.