Liam Aylward
Ceist: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]
Written Answers. - Nursing Course Fees.
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.
I am aware that the initiative does not cover all specialist courses and that nurses or midwives undertaking courses not included in this initiative often do so at their own expense. However, the areas included in the initiative have been identified as those where the shortage of specialist nurses is most acute. It is for this reason that I decided to concentrate resources available to me in the current year on those areas. Consequently, I am not in a position to provide funding for specialist courses in the area referred to by the Deputy. However, I have asked my Department to monitor the situation closely in the context of service needs.
As part of my overall recruitment/retention strategy, I have introduced the following financial support for nurses and midwives undertaking post-registration educational courses at an annual cost of some £9 million: payment of fees to nurses-midwives undertaking part-time nursing and certain other undergraduate degree courses; improved scheme of financial support for student public health nurses; enhanced financial support package for student midwives and student paediatric nurses; payment of fees and enhanced salary to nurses-midwives undertaking specific courses in specialised areas of clinical practice; abolition of fees for back-to-practice courses; and payment of salary to nurses-midwives undertaking such courses.
This is in addition to the £8.5 million which was allocated to the health agencies for continuing nurse education between 1994 and 1999. Individual nurses and midwives who are not eligible for funding under the schemes announced by me may apply to their employers for funding from the separate continuing nurse education budget available to their employers.