Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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418. To ask the Minister for Health if a campaign is taking place to recruit Irish nursing staff who have emigrated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24657/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The HSE is planning to recruit over 600 nurses across a number of nursing disciplines. There is significant work being undertaken to achieve this. This includes recent and ongoing national and local interviewing of General Nurses, Mental Health, Intellectual Disability, Registered Children's Nurses and Midwives. The HSE has developed an International Nurse Recruitment Project for filling posts. This initiative is a targeted recruitment drive in the UK primarily focused on Irish trained nurses who left during the moratorium. In order to facilitate this the services of a recruitment agency has been secured. It is hoped that the first of the interviews will commence in the coming weeks in a number of UK cities with the first nurses due to commence duty in August.