asked the Minister for Health whether he will consider extending the system applicable to mental nurses, whereby their training period is allowed as pensionable employment, to cover general nurses during their period of training.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - General Nurses: Training Period as Pensionable Employment.
4.
There is a fundamental difference between the arrangements for the training of psychiatric nurses and general nurses.
Each district mental hospital has a training school for psychiatric nurses and the number of student nurses in each is limited to the capacity of the hospitals concerned to absorb them when their training is completed. Very few psychiatric nurses are trained in this country outside these schools.
There are only four training schools for lay general nurses attached to local authority hospitals, viz. St. Finbarr's Hospital, Cork, the Galway and Limerick Regional Hospitals and Ardkeen Hospital, Waterford. The intake of student nurses at these hospitals is not related to the capacity of the hospitals to absorb them as qualified nurses in due course, with the result that many who train at the hospitals in question must, after qualification, seek posts elsewhere. Consequently, there can, in present circumstances, be no question of permanency in the local authority service for nurses who train in these hospitals.
Accordingly, I regret that I cannot see any prospect in the immediate future of extension to general nurses trained in the four schools for general nurses referred to of the arrangements mentioned in the case of the district mental hospitals.