The HSE has launched a major recruitment drive to hire hospital consultants to work in Ireland.
The new campaign will begin in the UK and Australia this week, before then moving on to the rest of Europe, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The HSE is hoping to recruit around 400 consultants to work in Ireland, including medics who practice abroad.
Speaking to RTE's Morning Ireland, HSE Chief Executive Bernard Gloster said that there will be a "time lag" between the recruitment of consultants abroad and when they take up their post in Ireland.
"We're essentially targeting two groups of people across a number of countries. The campaign is focused on the themes of 'time to come home' which are for Irish trained doctors who are working abroad and 'time to explore' for those trained abroad who might be considering moving to Ireland.
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"We're starting with the UK and Australia this week then we move onto the rest of Europe, Canada, New Zealand, and essentially as global as we're able to go." Mr Gloster added that the recruitment of consultants from abroad can take up typically up to "six months to a year" for consultants to wrap up their work in other countries before taking on their post in Ireland.
"There is a time lag, the issue for us would be how many we can recruit and sign contracts with and then turn into agreements, that would be where we would measure the success rate of the campaign," he added.
The new consultants will be offered the new public-only contract, which is worth over €250,000. However, the contract's requirements will mean doctors will have to do weekend and evening work.
Mr Gloster said that there has been an "exponential growth" in consultants in Ireland. "In 2019, the amount of approved posts in Ireland 3,286 and at the end of 2022 that was 4231. So when we talk about vacancies, I think we have to talk about them against a very high volume of growth activity already."
The HSE chief acknowledged that new consultants will be coming to work in a health system that is "under pressure", but that since additional 20,000 staff have joined the health service. However, Mr Gloster explained how at the moment the highest vacancies lie in general medicine and psychiatry.
He added that the health system still has a "stubborn reliance" on junior doctors, but that they are hoping to change this by recruiting consultants to supervise training. When asked about how a number of doctors will be rostered to work on evenings and weekends on a more permanent system, Mr Gloster stressed that doctors will "not be forced or obliged" to work a disproportionate part of the week over their colleagues.
"There are rotas and of course there is a variation in the amount of days and weekends that people work, we all have lives and we have to live those lives. I think anybody who enters into a contract for employment knows that's the case.
"If we didn't and we were simply to deploy a disproportionate amount of people, even people with new contracts into weekends, we wouldn't keep them for very long.
"We have a very good workforce, probably rated amongst the best in the world. We have to mind and respect that, but we also have to respond to the needs of our people, our health service is crucified by virtue of the fact that it operates on a fundamentally different basis on Saturday, Sunday, and Bank Holiday Mondays," added Mr Gloster.
He said that he has discussed with the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, Secretary General, and the Board of the HSE to advance "very detailed" proposals over the coming few weeks.
"It is to ensure we have the capacity to recruit and deploy on a five over seven basis for every grade employed in the health service," added Mr Gloster.
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