Liam Aylward
Question:162 Mr. Aylward asked the Minister for Health and Children if a person (details supplied) in County Kilkenny is entitled to funding towards the cost of her fees while undertaking a specialist nursing course. [2976/01]
Vol. 529 No. 4
162 Mr. Aylward asked the Minister for Health and Children if a person (details supplied) in County Kilkenny is entitled to funding towards the cost of her fees while undertaking a specialist nursing course. [2976/01]
On 29 November last I announced details of a £5 million package of incentives aimed at attracting nurses and midwives back to work, retaining nurses and midwives in the public health service and addressing shortages in specialist areas. As part of the initiative, I made funding available for nursing courses in specified specialised areas of clinical practice in order to address the critical shortage of nurses in those areas.
In particular, I provided funding for the establishment of new courses in hospitals outside Dublin, including the Cork hospitals, Waterford Regional Hospital and Limerick Regional Hospital. This is being done to arrest the drift of specialist nurses from the acute Dublin hospitals. The availability of new programmes in hospitals around the country will free up places in the Dublin hospitals which can be allocated to Dublin based nurses.
Under the initiative, nurses or midwives undertaking certain specialist courses will receive full pay while doing so. They will also be entitled to have their fees paid in full in return for a commitment on their part to continue working within the public health service in the specialist area for 12 months following completion of the course. These arrangements are effective from the current academic year and will apply to post-registration courses in the following areas of clinical practice: accident and emergency; critical care, including intensive care, coronary care and burns; and peri-operative, including peri-anaesthesia, operating theatre and operating department.