*Photograph: Sean Curtin / True Media
MORE ATTRACTIVE terms and conditions must be implemented in order to quell the amount of highly skilled medical professionals emigrating, a Clare TD has argued.
In the last five years, more than 100,000 young people have left Ireland for Australia and Canada.
Rates of staff turnover within the HSE are higher than 2019. In the first nine months of 2022, there was a turnover of seven per cent of nurses and midwives — up from six per cent four years ago — and 8.4 per cent of dentists and doctors, up from 7.6 per cent.This equates to over 3,000 staff in areas employing over 50,000 people.
Clare TD, Joe Carey (FG) when defending the performance of Fine Gael in Government stated, “We’ve basically brought the country out of a recession and back to full employment, we’ve navigated our way through Brexit, he showed immense leadership during COVID and I think people recognised that, I think we offer stability, experience and a vision for the country”.
Emigration of young people has remained high during Fine Gael’s eleven years in Government, notably in 2013 and again in recent months. “That has always happened. During COVID, people didn’t emigrate because they couldn’t, young people go away for various different reasons, quite an amount are considering that now, we also have an amount of people coming into the country and coming back, we have to recognise that too.
“I do think we could do a bit more to encourage particularly those in the medical profession whether it’s the nurses or the doctors, GPs, consultants to stay in our country for a period of time before they emigrate or take on roles in different countries. Government could do a lot there, we are training a lot more GPs, we’re training three times more GPs that we’ve done previously, the Government need to make it more attractive for GPs to stay here”.
During the height of the pandemic, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (FG) stated, “Not all superheroes wear capes, some wear scrubs and gowns”, yet insufficient efforts have been made to stop nurses and doctors from being one of the country’s biggest exports.
This observation was not lost on Deputy Carey. “I think we need to look at what other countries do in terms of accommodation or pay nurses more and look after them, the terms and conditions need to be more attractive to keep them here, they are highly skilled professionals and we need to recognise that. The delay in paying out the pandemic recognition payment to nurses and others across the medical professions that looked after our sick people during COVID, the delay in paying that out was shocking, the delay was wrong”.
Carey maintained that he has a good relationship with the Taoiseach. “When I was first elected we were on the same floor in Leinster House, he was in Clare a number of months ago and I work very closely with him, I can pick up the phone to him at any point, we’re in regular contact on a whole range of issues, he is a really good guy to come back, listen and take on board concerns I have”.
He felt that the Taoiseach had “the full confidence of the parliamentary party”. He added, “there has been a rocky start to this term with the loss of Damien English and the issues relating to Paschal Donohoe but I think we’ve overcome those and there is a clear challenges ahead. If you look at Fine Gael in Government, we’ve basically brought the country out of a recession and back to full employment, we’ve navigated our way through Brexit, he showed immense leadership during COVID and I think people recognised that, I think we offer stability, experience and a vision for the country”.
