By Mata Press Service

Canadian hospitals are headhunting Filipino nurses working in Ireland, with offers of fast-track work visas, better wages and even low-interest-rate car loans.

There are more than 10,000 foreign-born nurses working in Irish hospitals — a huge proportion of whom are Filipino nationals, Dublin media reported.

Filipino Overseas Ireland Ltd, which was on a recent recruitment drive, is hoping to attract 250 staff nurses for a hospital in Alberta.

Quoting sources in the Irish-Filipino community, a hundred nurses based in Irish hospitals signed up to work in Canada at a recent recruitment fair. The steady exodus has led to the magazine Filipino Forum running a lead feature titled “Goodbye Ireland.”

To date, very few Filipino nurses have been awarded citizenship in Ireland, even though many came here almost seven years ago.

“Very few have long-term residency, which is also only temporary. Even the first batch [of nurses] still haven’t got citizenship,” points out Michael Ancheta of Filipino Forum.

In stark contrast, the Canadian government allows brothers, sisters and parents to emigrate to Canada after four years. Other incentives include affordable subsidised housing grants as well as cheap car loans, local media said.

In America, the system is even more encouraging, with nurses who are recruited abroad offered a permanent resident visa on arrival.

The new nurses in Alberta will be among the highest paid nurses in Canada as a result of a new three-year contract that includes wage increases of 15 per cent and hefty cash bonuses.

The highest rates for senior nurses will increase to $43 an hour from $37 an hour in the third year of the deal.

In Alberta hospitals right now, roughly 20 per cent of Alberta’s 26,000 registered nurses are in a position to retire, creating a scenario for a serious shortage of nurses.

There’s also a new provision that allows nurses considering retirement to work part time and still get full contributions to their pensions.

The nurse crunch is also being faced elsewhere in Canada.

According to a 2004-05 government health report, there are 1,260 nurses per 100,000 people in Manitoba, 1,172 nurses per 100,000 in Saskatchewan, 1,020 nurses per 100,000 in Alberta and 823 per 100,000 in B.C.

All across Canada, there’s 1,004 nurses per 100,000.

Canadian nursing recruiters are coming to Ireland, rather than going directly to the Philippines, as they feel that Filipinos nurses working there will presumably have acquired first-rate English, and be fully up to speed with Westernised hospital environments.

In recent years the shine has gone off life in Ireland, with rising dissatisfaction among Filipino nurses at the high cost of living, poor accommodation and a non-recognition of their spouses’ qualifications.

In addition to this, their children are treated as overseas students and have to pay for their own college education tuition fees.

The Filipino nurses were originally recruited to fill chronic shortages in Irish hospitals run by Irish religious orders. The Sisters of Mercy, who run the Mater Hospital, pioneered the drive and the first batch of nurses arrived here in 2000.

Now, after many years of success, Canada is doing in Ireland what Ireland once did in the Philippines. And it will inevitably lead to a serious shortage of trained nursing staff in Ireland.

“It is already a drain that nursing staff have to be recruited abroad,” explained a spokesperson for the Health Service Executive. “As for staff deciding to work in Canada, it is up to individuals to decide what they want to do.”

The new Irish ‘green card’ system could make matters worse. The card has to be renewed every year, with the onus put on employers to prove that they couldn’t find a suitable nurse from Ireland or Europe to do the same job.

“There is going to be a huge shortage of nurses — not just here but worldwide,” explained Ann Keating, spokesperson for the Irish Nurses Organisation. “There are about 43,000 nurses in the system and about 10,000 of them were recruited overseas. The overseas nurses are leaving for better pay and conditions.

“But it’s not just Filipino nurses who are leaving. In the past eight years, about 12,000 Irish nurses have left for places like Canada.”

In the Philippines some 10,000 Filipino nurses have taken exams in the last six months in the hope of finding employment abroad.