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The HSE has launched a recruitment drive targeting Irish nurses and midwives who left Ireland to work abroad.

The campaign, which is hoping to fill 500 posts initially, is not before time as wards are being shut and new ones remain unopened because of nursing staff shortages.

A prime example of this, as revealed in the Irish Examiner late last month, concerns the new €3m high-observation unit in the psychiatric department of Kerry General Hospital in Tralee, which remains closed due to a nursing shortage.