No ‘Brexit’ campaign to try to ‘poach’ NHS staff

THE HSE is not undertaking any additional recruitment campaign to try to poach NHS staff who may want to leave the UK due to Brexit.

The UK is less popular with EU workers and staff from outside the eurozone because they are worried about a change in their rights.

Prime Minister Theresa May has attempted to retain nurses and doctors, speaking of the “Brexit dividend” – the extra money that she says can be spent on the NHS because the UK will no longer be paying into the EU budget.

Asked if it was stepping up its recruitment campaign in the UK to lure nurses and doctors to Ireland, the HSE said that it recruited on an ongoing basis, both locally and nationally.

It has recruitment campaigns for all grades of qualified healthcare professionals “both at entry and promotional level”.

A spokeswoman said: “All of these campaigns are run in line with codes of practice and are designed to attract the broadest global reach possible.”

There are also fears that the traffic could go the other way as the UK post-Brexit may offer extra incentives to health staff in Ireland to work in the NHS.

There were 690,278 nurses and midwives registered in the UK as of March 2018, a decrease of 495 on the previous year.

Some parts of the NHS have created special groups whose job it is to examine the “key concern” of recruiting workers after Brexit.