Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an issue that was brought up by Mr. Peter Hughes, the general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association who warned that the HSE recruitment embargo is seriously impacting service delivery. He said that the current situation, with more than 700 vacancies, was not sustainable and that reliance on overtime and agency staff could not meet the increase in demand for services. He said:

We conducted a survey of our branches last month and it showed that we had more over 700 vacancies in the system. We just think it is totally inconceivable that they are imposing a recruitment embargo at a time of such an amount of vacancies. This is seriously impacting the delivery of services.

Mr. Hughes also spoke about a lack of beds, a lack of provisions and about issues relating to Linn Dara.

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