Vol. 539 No. 3
25 Mr. Penrose asked the Minister for Health and Children the steps he intends to take to deal with the poaching by agencies of foreign nurses recruited to fill vacancies in hospitals; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19218/01]
A number of hospitals and other health care agencies use the services of recruitment agencies to source nurses from abroad for employment in the Irish health service. A nurse coming to work here under the working visa-work authorisation arrangements is entitled to work anywhere as a nurse in the country. Nurses recruited from abroad enjoy similar conditions to Irish nurses and, like Irish nurses, may undertake agency work if they so wish. However, this is without prejudice to any contractual arrangement that an individual nurse may have entered into with a particular health service employer.
I am not aware that nurses recruited from abroad by Irish hospitals are being poached by nursing agencies. If the Deputy has a particular case in mind, I will be happy to make further inquiries into the matter.
In the case of the new hospital at Tallaght, the chief executive officer has advised my Department that there is a minimum transfer of nurses from the hospital to the nursing homes sector. Under a general contract arrangement between the hospital and its recruitment agency, where nurses leave the employment of the hospital before the specified date, the agency must replace the nurses free of fees.
My understanding of the position is that some nurses recruited from abroad for employment in particular sectors were seeking to transfer to the large acute general hospitals. In this context, the Deputy will be reassured to learn that it is the practice of the Dublin academic teaching hospitals not to offer employment to nurses from abroad while they are still under contract with the health service agencies for whom they were originally recruited.
