Phil Ní Sheaghdha, general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), has questioned ISH recruitment policy as too bureaucratic.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha while giving a talk to RTÉ Radio 1 this morning, said the HSE must to get rid of all the red tape.
She was mentioning new statistics released in response to a parliamentary question by Alan Kelly, Labour Party leader, which exposed that while comparing to pre covid numbers, there are now almost 200 fewer permanent nurses working in the health system than there were before Covid-19.
As per the HSE figures of December 2019, there were 41,572 permanent nursing and midwifery staff working in the health system. While it reached December 2019, this had reduced to 41,373.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said there was no excuse for not appointing permanent staff, but pointed out that the enrolment process was an obstacle.
She said that it could take seven to eight weeks to get clearance to advertise the job vacancy.
In the figures given to Kelly, says that when the number of permanent nurses declined by 2020, the number of temporary contract employees increased.
During December 2019, there were 2,288 provisional midwives and nurses. While coming to this year’s figures this had leaped to 4,026 by August.
Meanwhile, Ms Ní Sheaghdha also said that ‘Be On Call’ initiative was also not up to the mark. She said that the nurses, who returned to Ireland in response to the campaign were not given jobs by the government, thus they were contracted to agencies.