Health and Social Care workforce planning and ensuring a sufficient supply of suitably qualified healthcare professionals in Ireland is a top priority for the Government.
The tables in Appendix 1 show the number of students studying nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy in Ireland across all years for each of the past ten years together with the number who have graduated for each of the past ten years.
Regarding the barriers to training Health and Social Care Professionals and the provision of nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists in Ireland the HSE’s National Office for Health and Social Care Professionals published a report on Health and Social Care Professions Practice Education During and Post COVID-19 (HSE, 2021) which is available here. www.beai.ie/sites/beai/files/publications/%283%29%20HSCP%20Report%20on%20HSCP%20Practice%20Education%20During%20and%20Post-COVID-19.pdf
This report informs the Department and the HSE in its efforts to remove barriers to training. Officials from my Department engage on an ongoing basis with colleagues in the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that we train enough graduates with the skills necessary to support the delivery of our health and social care services and to develop a strategic approach to workforce planning for the health sector.
Ongoing discussions between both Departments are in relation to increasing domestic supply on health-related courses in the short term to medium term, through the immediate provision of additional places, and the longer-term planning being undertaken around future skills needs in the context of future demand for health and social care services.
In relation to the number of students who are still working in Ireland after they have graduated the Deputy may be aware that the CSO has developed a statistical framework known as the 'Educational Longitudinal Database' (ELD) in collaboration with Irish public sector bodies to examine learner outcomes. The ELD is produced by matching datasets on learners that have completed courses or programmes to other datasets which describe their outcomes in subsequent years. The data sources used to describe learner outcomes include employment and self-employment datasets from Revenue, benefits data from the Department of Social Protection, and data on educational participation from the Department of Education and several state agencies, including the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) and SOLAS. As part of the strategic workforce planning function in the Department, my officials are exploring the potential of this database to examine the outcomes, including employment outcomes, for students of health and social care courses in Ireland.
Nursing details
