THE HEALTH MINISTER is calling on Irish health workers overseas to come home.
It comes as it was announced that 500 new nurses will be recruited this year.
Speaking at the Fine Gael conference in Mayo, Minister Leo Varadkar said, “Recruitment of nurses is now underway again.
“The cycle of cuts is now over and I want the message to go out to our doctors, our nurses and our therapist overseas, in England, in America, in Australia and the Middle East.
The time has now come to consider coming back to Ireland to help us rebuild our health services and to contribute to Ireland’s recovery.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation welcomed the announcement but said it will “continue to engage with the HSE to ensure that the posts are offered with the best possible terms and conditions so that we can compete with the UK, and other countries, who are aggressively recruiting Irish nurses at this time”.
INMO General Secretary Liam Doran said,
The terms and conditions for these nursing posts must be made very attractive so that we can bring back to Ireland some of the hundreds of young professional nurses that we have lost, to other countries, in recent years.
Vardkar added, “We’re really only getting started and it will take many years to increase our health service.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say