Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. It is fortunate this Topical Issue comes on the foot of the previous one because they are significantly linked. I will not read out the written reply because Deputy Buttimer has addressed most of the points in it, but there are answers in it which may be of interest. Deputy Buttimer knows the difficulty is that nurses who train outside of the country have to register here. I think everyone agrees this should be the case. Their qualifications must be scrutinised to ensure public safety. We are all agreed on that but there are difficulties.

The reply notes that each and every application will be assessed within a maximum of 90 days. Deputy Buttimer has pointed out that is not the case so I am not going to reiterate that fact. What is in the reply that might be of interest to Deputy Buttimer, however, is that there are two remaining HSE adaptation courses available in June and August of this year. These courses are for people who have registered and need to complete an adaptation course. They are six to 12 weeks in duration and facilitate the integration of nurses from elsewhere to nursing in an Irish context. It may be of interest to the Deputy to learn that since the nationally co-ordinated pilot adaptation programme commenced in June 2014, which is just one year ago, 151 candidates have completed the programme, 58 candidates are currently undergoing assessment and 126 candidates are due for assessment up to the final programme in August 2015.

Outside of the current provision for placements in 2015, there are 293 requests for placements by employers and many of them, as the Deputy rightly states, are in the nursing home sector and our own hospital. These numbers are not reflective of a national total as some hospital sites have also run independent adaptation programmes. As the Deputy can see, there are many people who wish to work in this country but simply have not completed the required adaptation course. I advise Deputy Buttimer that the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland has been allocated additional resources to address the issue and I note that having the chairman or the CEO come before the committee is a wise move by it.

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