Permanent contracts for trainee paramedics
Deputy Rice said newly qualified paramedics were being denied permanent contracts despite previous assurances, worsening the ambulance service crisis. The Tánaiste said he would speak to the Health Minister and argued the service needed to retain scarce staff.
I am going to be the third Member to raise issues with the National Ambulance Service this morning-----
Comment on this
-----which should give the Tánaiste a sense of the scale of the crisis there. For the first time, newly qualified paramedics are not being offered permanent contracts. Instead, this cohort of graduates are only being offered short contract extensions and the opportunity to reapply and compete for their own jobs. Up until now, paramedics who successfully completed the training programme transitioned directly into permanent contracts. In December, this cohort of graduates was given the same assurance that permanent contracts would be offered to them once they got their results from University College Cork, UCC, but this promise has been broken. Last week, just after receiving their exam results, they found out they would have to compete for their current positions and that this would affect not just the current paramedics but also those who are currently in training. All graduates and trainees had a legitimate expectation that they would be offered permanent contracts. Why has the rug been pulled from under them?
At a time when the National Ambulance Service is understaffed and staff morale is so low, this is an act of self-sabotage. Many of these graduates have made major financial commitments including mortgages, rents and childcare, all based on the expectation they would be given permanent jobs in their current location, not in another region across the country. Will the Tánaiste do more than talk to the Minister? Will the Government step in here and ensure this decision is reversed?
Comment on this
I thank Deputy Rice. The Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, has responsibility for the delivery of health policy and the oversight of the HSE, so I will speak to her directly on this. I take the point that newly qualified paramedics are a scarce commodity with regard to their skill set at a time when we are trying to increase the numbers we have working in our ambulance service. The Deputy is right; ambulance service issues come up in this House regularly. We will want to do all we can to retain them within the health service but I will ask the Minister to come directly back to the Deputy on the issue. I will also ask Bernard Gloster, the chief executive of the HSE, to update me on the matter and we will come back on it.