THE IRISH NURSES and Midwives Organisation has insisted that one thousand currently working nurses will lose their employment as a result of the Health Service Executive’s graduate employment programme.
In a statement this afternoon, General Secretary Liam Doran disputed the HSE’s Director of Human Resource’s claim that he had misrepresented the facts with regard to currently-employed nurses.
Speaking on Morning Ireland today, Barry O’Brien had said that no nurses currently on contract would lose their jobs because of the scheme.
The scheme has been met with much criticism from representative unions, which have likened it to a cheap labour scam.
With his statement, Doran circulated a memo sent by the HSE’s Human Resources department on 14 December 2012 which outlined:
Please be advised that should any hospital have provided contracted employment to 2012 graduates following on from their final clinical placement these should be discontinued immediately.
The General Secretary added:
“This sentence is actually highlighted in this memo and is explicitly designed to advise hospitals to terminate the employment of new graduates, currently being paid the correct rate, so that they are forced to apply for these new jobs at the 80 per cent rate.
“In addition, the INMO reaffirms the reality that, in order to fund these graduate places, 1,000 existing nurses, currently employed through agencies and on short-term contracts will have to be sacked to allow for these new graduates to take up their posts.”
The memo, seen by TheJournal.ie, also states that the initiative provides an “exceptional opportunity to significantly reduce agency usage and overtime”.
Earlier, O’Brien has said the HSE currently employs 35,000 nurses and when recruitment was complete, it would hire 36,000 nurses.
“Outside of the employment control ceiling, a thousand graduates can be offered two year contracts in addition to the approved ceiling for nurses which we currently have, so they are additional jobs.”
When asked if he thought it was fair for them to do the same work for 80 per cent of the pay he said: “It’s no different from any other job where you have a direct graduate entry programme and people join the work environment at that grade.”
O’Brien added that there would be “no circumstances in which we will tolerate any sort of a non cooperation with any graduate who comes to work under this programme by their colleagues”.
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