I answered Simon’s call... now I have no job or even virus pay
OF THE 73,000 volunteers who rallied to Simon Harris’s call to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, only 7,000 were interviewed – and only 140 have started work, the HSE has admitted to the Irish Daily Mail.
The revelation came to light after one nurse told how she quit her job in Australia after the ‘come home’ appeal went out – but now she has no job and doesn’t even qualify for the Covid-19 pandemic payment.
Áine Gleeson, 24, a psychiatric nurse from Donegal, flew home from Melbourne 11 weeks ago to sign up to the Be On Call for Ireland initiative.
To get home, she had to pay for three separate flights, as the first two were cancelled, but weeks after arriving she has yet to receive even one nursing shift in the Donegal area. She told Highland radio yesterday: ‘I re-registered with the national panel to try and get a HSE job but they haven’t even held interviews yet for that.
‘I’m registered with Nurse On Call as well, so I’m on call 24-7 but there hasn’t been one mental health shift available anywhere in Donegal over the past few weeks.
‘I think they put a panic on for the recruitment drive and they didn’t really think about what was going to happen once everyone arrived home.’
In March, Health Minister Mr Harris launched a ‘massive recruitment drive’ urging Irish nurses and doctors to re-register with the Be On Call initiative, claiming their country needed them. Many quit their jobs and returned from abroad in response and over 70,000 registered in the online recruitment drive.
But a HSE spokesman told the Mail that there were 73,000 applications, of which ‘14,000 self-identified as having possible relevant health experience or qualifications and not currently working in the health service’.
‘The relevant candidate pools went through an online screening process which reduced the 14,000 to a pool of approximately 7,700 relevant applicants (i.e. applicants who self-identified as having the experience/qualifications that were needed by the health service at that time in the pandemic).’ They said: ‘Approximately 7,000 were interviewed of which a pool of approximately 2,600 passed the interview and said they were available to work.’
They said that approximately 800 were ‘job ready’ i.e. had passed the clearance process. Approximately 1,160 remain in the clearance process.
Some 140 candidates have started working and an additional 660 are available to the services.
However, Áine’s patriotic response to the ‘recruitment drive’ has now left her without a job and she is back home living with her parents. Despite being unemployed, she can’t claim the Covid-19 payment as she has been working in Australia for the past year.
‘Because we weren’t paying tax this year in Ireland, we don’t qualify for it,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of left us in a bit of a nightmare situation to be honest.
‘I think there’s a lot of people in the same boat. I flew home with one of my friends on the same flight and she hasn’t got a shift yet either.’
With no work on the horizon, she may be forced to look for a new job.
‘I don’t want to do anything other than nursing but I don’t know, I might have to think,’ she said. ‘I had to pay for three flights so I’m dipping into the savings now with no work.
‘Luckily I’m able to live at home. My family are being quite supportive at the moment but I know others aren’t so lucky. If I had known that I’d be unemployed and living at home again, for this long, I might have thought twice about coming home so quick.’
The HSE also said student nurses were progressed in a separate stream and over 1,220 have been appointed as healthcare assistants in community and acute settings.