The National Recruitment Service (NRS) is no longer fit for purpose and is causing unacceptable delays to the recruitment of frontline staff, Jennifer Bollard of the Executive Council told delegates, in a demand to return the recruitment of frontline staff to local level.

Delays are negatively impacting on the quality of patient care as services, at local level, are directly suffering as a consequence of undue bureaucracy.

Since 2009 all HSE recruitment has been centralised in the NRS and since then there have been unprecedented delays in recruiting, Ms Bollard said.

“We must have a sustainable workforce and this requires workforce planning. This is not happening within the NRS. Frontline staff are not being recruited and not being replaced in a timely fashion. Staff must be recruited in local areas with the support of their own local HR teams. I urge the Organisation to seek a return of this very important role to nursing and midwifery directors.”

Jennifer Bollard, Executive Council

Anne Burke, Executive Council and Galway Branch, said: “The NRS is a HSE tool that is out of date and has created more of an impediment to recruiting than it does to assist. From an acute hospital perspective, it is creating untold obstacles in the processing of successfully-interviewed candidates.

“It is wholly true to say that many nurses and midwives who have been placed on panels three or four years ago have either remained there or not been appointed to the posts they applied for because they have left the country due to the inordinate amount of time they have had to wait to be appointed. One would be forgiven for thinking that this was a deliberate ploy. It’s time for the NRS to go. Colleagues empower the directors of nursing locally to recruit in the good oldfashioned way and the proven way”.

The motion was passed unanimously.

ADC - National Recruitment Service ‘not fit for purpose’