Health system has 200 fewer permanent nurses than before Covid-19
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There are now almost 200 fewer permanent nurses working in our health system than before the pandemic "shocking" new figures reveal.
There were 41,572 permanent nursing and midwifery staff working in the HSE last December, however, this had decreased to 41,373 in August of this year, the statistics available show.
Labour leader Alan Kelly described the figures as "galling" and said frontline staff who have been doing their utmost to protect us through the pandemic "have been let down".
“It is absolutely shocking in the middle of a global pandemic that the number of permanent nurses in our health service has fallen," he said.
Phil Ní Sheaghdha, Inmo general secretary, said there is "simply no excuse" for not employing permanent staff.
She said: "We are going to need all the skilled nurses and midwives we can get."
Citing the €4bn extra spending on health under Budget 2021, which includes a promise to provide 1,146 additional acute hospital beds, she said extra services cannot run without the proper staffing levels.
She said: "There is a global shortage of nurses and midwives. If we want to recruit from overseas, we need to be offering permanent contracts with decent terms and conditions. Otherwise nurses and midwives will simply go elsewhere."
Mr Kelly, who received the figures from the HSE, said Covid-19 has shown how stretched our health service is and called on the Government to address the issue.
He said: "Health workers are stressed beyond breaking point while doing their utmost to serve the public. They have all been let down. They don’t need our applause, or kind words, they need safe staffing. The collective mental health of our health workers cannot afford to be sold a pup now when it comes to increasing staffing numbers.
"We are about to head into a winter of unknowns within our health service, those who work there deserve all the staffing support they can get."
While the number of permanent nurses has fallen this year, the number of staff on temporary contracts has increased.
There were just 2,289 temporary midwives and nurses working in the HSE in December of last year, this had increased to 4,026 by August of this year.
However, Mr Kelly said it is "even more distressing" that the number of temporary staff has almost doubled.
"If we want our health service to be an attractive and supportive place to work, we need to hire more permanent positions to reduce the stress on frontline staff," he said.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said the "unwelcome legacy" of the recruitment freeze is continuing and said keeping much-needed staff on temporary contracts "absolutely goes against all efforts to retain and recruit the nursing staff we need".
"There's a range of emergency measures we took at the start of the pandemic: paid work for students, HSE staff going to private facilities, and so on. Those were all genuine responses to an emergency, but now we must focus on planning for the long-run," she said.
The HSE has also revealed that just 105 nursing contacts have been issued under the Be on Call for Ireland process, which promised agency contracts to healthcare workers who returned from abroad or came out of retirement at the start of the pandemic.
Mr Kelly said: "The Be On Call for Ireland initiative saw thousands of health care professionals from all walks of life and across the globe put themselves forward to help Ireland tackle Covid-19, considering hundreds travelled home to our island from as far away as Australia to be there at one of our country's darkest hours, it is a disgrace that only 105 agency contracts went to nurses. We should be doing all we can to hold on to these people."
He said: "In Budget 2021, the Government made a big deal about their intention to hire 16,000 additional healthcare staff in the next year, judging by their lack of ambition around the Be On Call for Ireland programme, I don't see how this will be possible."