HSE focusing on improving international recruitment for disability services

Minister of State at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Anne Rabbitte TD says there is a 'wide, accelerated recruitment process at the moment'. Picture: Jim Coughlan.

A recruitment crisis in the HSE is being partially tackled by work to quickly facilitate international recruitment, Disabilities Minister Anne Rabbitte said.

Work is being done with professional healthcare regulatory bodies to allow international graduates to more easily gain access to Ireland's job market.

Speech and language graduates from the North and the UK were not qualified to practice in Ireland because their training did not include one module required in Ireland. 

But work has commenced with Coru, the speech and language therapist registration board, to allow these graduates to begin work in Ireland as an associate therapist while completing the extra module once they've commenced work.

“The idea that we can recruit internationally is very important.

“Particularly in the border counties, they would love to be able to recruit from Northern Ireland, but they can’t because of that missing module, so now we are going to bridge that gap.

“It gives us access to a wider pool of therapists, from the UK too. 

“There’s a very wide, accelerated recruitment process at the moment,” Ms Rabbitte said.

“I’ve been watching it myself on LinkedIn for the last number of weeks to see ‘Am I seeing the speech and language therapists?’ I’m seeing it in CHO 4 (Cork and Kerry), CHO 2 (Galway, Roscommon, Mayo), so I am seeing it’s started.” 

Recruitment is also being speeded up by quickly getting everyone currently on a HSE recruitment panel into a position, she said.

Ms Rabbitte confirmed this week that 136 new therapist appointments, at the cost of €11m, will be given to special schools this year, in addition to the further 85 posts for which funding was previously secured from Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath.

“At least then I know that 8,500 children [enrolled in special schools] are having an intervention," she said.

More than 110,000 children are on waiting lists for interventions like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy.

None of the 91 children’s disability network teams (CDNTs) were fully staffed according to HSE figures earlier this year and they were operating at 28% vacancy rates on average.

Ms Rabbitte said that filling current vacancies “would be massive”. 

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This year’s budget is vital for her department, she said. Although she has already started spending ahead of it to secure more therapists, with the support of Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath, she hopes that this year’s budget will cement her hopes for improving disability services for the months and years ahead — even if a cabinet shuffle removes her from her position when Leo Varadkar begins his role again as Taoiseach in December.

If she does stay in her current role, her major priority will be ensuring that the budgets she secured for disabilities is “operationalised” so that money gets to where it's needed. 

At a meeting with parents of children with disabilities in Cork earlier this year, she realised that the budgets she had fought to secure were often not getting through to service users.

“Parents there felt let down by the system. I had done two budgets fighting to put money into the system but not realising that unless the money is operationalised, it's no good to anyone. That’s what that meeting brought home to me.

“It wasn’t getting its way through the end user, whether you were in day services, residential, respite, school , services, CDNTs, or aids and appliances, it wasn’t getting to them.

“Operationalising the money is key for me in 2023.

“The Taoiseach has given me his support. Michael [McGrath] has given me two years and there will be a third year of money. If I’m left in the job after December I will then follow it [the money] to the end user.”

She said that the disabilities portfolio is hugely challenging but also “the most rewarding.” 

“Everything’s a battle. There are no ‘wins’ in disability,” Ms Rabbitte said.

But every little step is progression. We have done good work.” 

Some of that good work has been securing record budgets for disability services in Ireland - €2.2bn in 2021 for HSE-funded disability support services, an increase of €179m or almost 9% on disability spending in 2020.

“A good win this year would be [extending] eligibility status on recruitment, that’s a big win, so we can recruit from abroad. Working with the likes of CORU. So I know the dial has turned in a positive sense, and that couldn’t happen either without the HSE being willing.”