Newly qualified nurses and midwives have been left uncertain about their futures as the HSE withholds job contracts despite significant vacancies at University Hospital Galway and Government policy.
After a month of the worst hospital overcrowding on record, graduate nurses and midwives across the country have not received offers from the HSE, potentially due to funding controls initiated by the Minister for Public Expenditure last month.
Many of the HSE regions withholding offers have been singled out for poor financial management, including the West and Northwest region under which UHG is managed.
In a statement last week, Sinn Féin TDs Mairéad Farrell and Louis O’Hara called on Minister for Health Jennifer Caroll MacNeill and the CEO of the HSE Anne O’Connor to ensure graduating nurses from University of Galway receive contracts at UHG.
O’Hara said dozens of newly graduated nurses have been given no indication of when their contracts will be approved. “These graduates were previously told they were guaranteed positions in UHG once graduated and received offers two weeks ago, however they have now been told that there are no positions open to them.”
A number of midwives were informed that they will not be offered positions at UHG despite 23 vacant positions.
O’Hara raised the issue with the Taoiseach last week. As of publication, Farrell says there has been no new information, even after the budget came out: “We’ve been told since we raised it that there will be an update any day now and there is still no update.”
The situation comes on the heels of the worst month of hospital overcrowding on record, according to data from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. The INMO Trolley Watch shows that in September, 12,274 patients were treated in inappropriate locations. University Hospital Galway was the second-worst nationwide, following Limerick with 1,061 patients treated on trolleys.
INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheadghdha says the HSE must immediately publish a winter plan outlining how they will reduce these numbers. “The HSE must begin to recruit additional staff immediately, and remove all obstacles to recruitment being faced by senior nurse and midwife managers, or we will see catastrophic safety incidents occurring in acute settings this winter.”
The INMO also says that witholding or withdrawing graduate offers breaches longstanding national employment commitments as well as Government policy.
Last December, the Department of Health reported that “the retention of all graduate nurses and midwives across services” is a key part of the HSE’s approach to address workforce expansion, and in 2025, every graduate from Irish universities and colleges was offered a permanent contract.
An essential element of the Government Slaintécare plan was the regionalisation of HSE services and decision-making. The six regions, established in 2024, were meant to “improve how these services are run and how people take responsibility for them” as well as “strengthen local decision-making by giving regions the power to plan, manage and deliver their own care,” per the HSE website.
The regions were also given individual budgetary discretion. In July of this year all six regions reported overspending to various degrees, according to an internal HSE report leaked to the Irish Times.
Last month, the HSE West and Northwest region (along with three others ) was stripped of control over day-to-day spending at the initiative of Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers.
Ní Sheadghdha says newly qualified nurses and midwives must not become victims of poor financial planning.
INMO New Graduate Officer Ralph Brennan added that Irish graduates are highly sought after by health services abroad. “These are young nurses and midwives who want to stay, work and build their careers in Ireland. We cannot expect young nurses and midwives to stay in Ireland if this is how we treat them at the very beginning of their careers.”
“Whatever happens, this needs to be urgently sorted,” says Galway TD Farrell. “It is insane that we have a situation where nurses are ready to go and work and want to work in our hospital where we need them, and there is no clarity for them.”
As of October 5, there are 575 patients waiting for hospital beds nationwide, and 33 at University Hospital Galway. HSE West and Northwest did not respond to request for comment on the contracts or funding situation.
