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AN OIREACHTAS COMMITTEE is set to question representatives of the new grant-awarding body for third-level students over the major backlog in the system.
Around 48,000 students were still waiting for their grant applications to be processed as of last Thursday. Just 18,000 out of 66,000 applications have been completed so far.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland programme this morning, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said the delay was “not satisfactory”.
Representatives from Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI), the body which was set up earlier this year to replace local authorities and VECs as the single third-level grant-awarding authority in the country, will be questioned by the Oireachtas committee on education about the problems and what exactly is being done to clear the backlog.
“Our committee is concerned at the considerable strain on third level students and their families while they wait for a decision on their application for a grant, as well as for the funding to come through for succcessful applications,” said committee chair Joanna Tuffy.
The Labour TD said mistakes made by applicants could be forming part of the delay but was not the core of the delay.
The Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection will meet from 11.30am in Leinster House this morning and can be watched online on the Oireachtas website.
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stay for the education, leave for the job
@Benny: one third of Irish medical graduates do Graduate Entry Medicine and pay their own way. That’s 65k in fees I paid and what incentive is there for me to stay and work here in Ireland? So don’t be so quick to make such throwaway comments about something you know nothing about. I work my backside off and after all the deductions I really think I’d be better off working in Penneys.
@Sinead Mooney: what about the other two thirds?
@Benny: who are you to say they should be beholden to the Irish state when everyone else with a degree that’s ‘paid for’ by the taxpayer can go off wherever they like? It’s called human rights. The state need to follow through with decent working conditions and pay if they want to retain their doctors. Same could be said for nurses.. Engineers.. IT specialists. You can’t just choose one profession to imprison here forevermore.
@Sinead Mooney: I never said they were beholden to the state. I’m saying that they stay in Ireland for the qualification and then go somewhere else. And its not “paid for” by the state, its paid for.
@Benny: Why? Did they appear out of a vacuum when they turned 18? Do they not have families who have lived here their entire lives and paid taxes, etc. Besides you can’t just pick and choose – if you’re going to try and force young doctors to stay here on the premise that their education was “paid for” the same has to be said for engineers, teachers, lawyers people with business degrees, arts degrees etc
@Benny: you’ve clearly never been to an Irish third level institution. Or else someone else paid your 4k registration fees, room and board. Lucky you. If I didn’t want to stay in Ireland and raise my family here I’d be on the next plane because my work satisfaction is absolutrly zero.
@Benny: Except that all 38 served their time in Irish hospitals first. I don’t blame them for trying to change a bad system. I don’t expect them to devote the rest of their life to squeezing past trolleys in corridors. We should thank them for trying – and for not settling for less for their unfortunate patients.
@Sinead Mooney: you’re absolutely right. I’m not a medical professional and I’m in no way attacking the work you do. But you and this article have clearly said that working in the sector in ireland is a complete disaster! So why would anyone train to be a nurse in Ireland other than for what I’ve said? Get educated in Ireland, and then move abroad for the career. The legal, arts, business graduates are more likely to stay around I’d imagine because its the private sector they’d be going into for the most part.
@Benny: cheap shot
@Sinead Mooney: sinead you decided to do the graduate program to get into medicine and pay those fees, nobody else so complaining about it now holds no water. The cost to the state to educate a GP as opposed to an engineer or a Computer engineer is vastly different, the cost to the HSE to train a gp is 300k not including college costs. Why shouldn’t they be tied to the role within ireland for length of time. Do you think its ok for that person to cost the state in excess of 350k just leave once qualified. I completely get the total lack of job satisfaction in HSE but the investment in that person should in some way be repaid.
@Benny: Thats an interesting point, how many people are studying medicine now versus 20 years ago? Are less people interested in becoming a doctor or nurse because of the current state of the industry?
@Stephen Walshe:
Where does the figure of 350,000 euro come from? Can you show your work please.
@Stephen Walshe: That seems to represent the salary costs of employing a doctor for several years not training cost. It would be like saying it costs a million euro to train a school principle if they had worked as a teacher beforehand for twenty years.
@Benny: I bet if they were here complaining you’d be one of the first to say if you don’t like it leave.
@Stephen Walshe: To become a GP you must WORK for at least 5 years as a doctor in various hospitals/GP surgeries. When I say work, I mean 60hrs + p/w, 24+ shifts etc. The salaries paid for that WORK is included in that 350,000E figure you quoted. Your number is clearly nonsense
@Ger Finch: No it doesn’t, it lays out plain as day what it costs the hse to send a doctor out into the community for two years to train whilel being paid for by the hse where they don’t see a direct benefit and the cost associated with having them do a further 2 yrs in a hospital environment where they do.Your principle comparison is nonsense.
@Damon16: 60hrs every week for 5 yrs on 24+ hrs shifts ,well the gp’s I work with dont do anything like that EVER .. and the salary are of course included in that figures the yrs spent in the community and in the hospitals are training on the job of course it part of the 350k. THEY ARE TRAINING which is exactly my point
@Stephen Walshe: But the doctor is working. I don’t think you understand. Training means working in a hospital as fully qualified doctor, seeing patients, making decisions, doing on-call duties etc while studying for exams in your spare time (for GP exams). The doctor is being paid for work done. Its like saying all nurses are training until they become a clinical nurse manager.
@Damon16: I completely understand, but its still a cost is it not?
@Benny: Make more places available in college, leading to lower CAO points and solve the problem. Also get rid of the ridiculous and costly HPAT
@Stephen Walshe: So you think it’s acceptable to expect doctors to work in conditions that are hazardous to their own physical and mental well being (not to mention patients) just so they can pay back their supposed debt to the country?
@Sinead Mooney: Why don’t you go work in Pennies they pay really well
your comments are quite condescending
@Marie Lynch: Consider yourself fortunate that there are people like Sinead willing to provide you an essential service, which despite all the bad reviews is actually very good for the most part.
@Stephen Walshe: how many doctors are MILLIONAIRS?
@Damon16: he doesn’t understand
@Stephen Walshe: nope
@Stephen Walshe: you clearly don’t understand. They are working. The work counts as training towards becoming a specialist. The trainees (junior doctors) are keeping the HSE afloat.
@Benny: there’s no onus to repay your university education in our country. This is a null point. Would you ban everyone who went to university from leaving?
@Stephen Walshe: that’s why we pay a lot of taxes in Ireland, to fund thing such as our 3rd level education
@Sinead Mooney: Here Here. Plenty of our teachers , nurses, engineers are abroad. If Ireland has a problem with free fees at university then this applies to all our graduates and is a different conversation. Can’t force doctors to stay when their jobs are tantamount to human rights abuse. 24 to 36 hour shifts awake!
@Stephen Walshe: where are you plucking those figures from…I’d like to see the source.
As an Aussie, I cannot count the number of Irish doctors and nurses we have. One local hospital seems almost entirely staffed by English and Irish professionals (it’s not, but it always seems the ER/ED is).
My GP emigrated from England a couple of years ago. The thing is that despite the fact the place is currently on fire, it’s actually still decent here, you can afford to work reasonable hours and get your annual leave at Christmas and during school holidays to be with the kids, we EXPECT our doctors, like most of the rest of us, to have a balance and go on holiday.
Maybe if you didn’t expect your staff to be superheroes and never require sleep, you’d get more people wanting to stay. It’s the conditions – you ALL deserve protection and you ALL deserve to be treated with respect by your employer. Stop arguing over who has it worse and start mobilising to make it better.
Wait? they changed a doctors roster so he can be covering the ICU where his wife was? That goes against so many rules and guidelines. That alone requires an investigation, not that it would achieve anything.
Non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHD) rotate from hospital to hospital on a 6 monthly basis. Therefore, NCHDs are treated as transient passers through by hospitals and are not afforded the same respect as other qualified health professionals – either by the hospitals themselves, consultants, nursing staff or other health care workers. This results in lack of access office space or dedicated computer access (despite the vast amounts of paperwork required to be done), no protected breaks, doctors having to organize their own sick cover if sick resulting in many doctors attending work ill. The NCHD contract – which is the only one going if you want to be employed as a hospital doctor in Ireland – stipulates that you must work the hours required by the service, regardless of how excessive. I know of no other group of workers in the state (public or private) who are contractually obliged to break EU working hour limits (sometimes by double or triple) as doctors are. Maybe if hospitals starting treating doctors are qualified professionals many more would stay
@Damon16: as far as I remember junior doctors were one of groups excluded from the working time directive so they’re not covered by the rules.
There right to go why would you stay here.
@Fran O’Keeffe: I suppose the ironic thing about it is that they are complaining about the conditions but they, 300 of them, leaving, is very much one of the causes of those poor conditions, lack of qualified staff in the system. Let’s face it, if we were all young, fancy free, had a very sought after qualification and fancied the outback lifestyle, we’d all be hot tailing it to Australia. Working in IT, Finance, Sales for large corporations who are chasing the dime means working long hours, often for little reward, no union protection, being disposable, and selling your soul to the devil. The tough working conditions, difficulty in getting work life balance right is not unique to the medical profession.
@GrumpyAulFella: Does working in IT, finance and sales require 24 hour shifts, often with no break, making life and death decisions with little or no support? I have worked in those finance and sales sectors and as a doctor. There is no comparison. The Irish healthcare service survives on the goodwill of its doctors and nurses who work in extremely challenging conditions that would never be tolerated in the private sector.
@Philip Kavanagh: Also I know from experience that you’ll be afforded much more respect from colleagues, your employer and “clients” as a professional working in those fields than as a doctor in the HSE
@Philip Kavanagh: it involves working outside of normal office hours without receiving overtime, more often than not. It requires going the extra mile to “get the job done”, sucking dollars in for shareholders, poor pension, little financial reward, job always on the line, lucky to catch a break… there are no automatic annual increments, no salary scales. Any increase is performance based. There is no IMO to look out for your interests. This is the reality of working in these sectors in modern Ireland. Pressure and poor working conditions is not confined to hospitals.
@GrumpyAulFella: Never catching a break? Little financial reward? Rubbish. Nobody stays in medicine because of the money. There are far easier ways to make a lot more money than being a medic. I know. I’ve done them. Ever single day and every single shift medics go more than an extra mile to “get the job done“. I don’t regret going back to become a doctor, and I will not allow people like you to belittle the work of our frontline medical staff or gloss over the often appalling conditions they face – which I will say again and with complete certainty – would never, ever be tolerated in the private or semi state sectors.
So, doctors are heading to many countries because of pay, conditions and life/work balance and someone was funded to go to Australia to investigate. I am not a doctor, I know no doctors, but I could have come to exactly the same conclusions without being fully funded to go to friggin’ Australia…
You don’t need to to Australia, just go to any one of the country’s EDs and you’ll get your answer.
Not a one doctor in this article complained and said that if conditions are that bad in Irish hospitals for them that it is the patients who suffer mostly. I see them as selfish thinking of themselves as more important than the patients. Sorry to say that they in majority go for this profession so they have got it all. The patients who suffer mostly are not mentioned in this article.
To get education and qualifications in this country and go elsewhere is highly immoral.
But then alot people in government are doctors or linked to the medical profession.
@Viola Bingham: I think you will find that one of the biggest components of ‘burnout’ – the process where people become mentally, emotionally and physically unable to perform a task- includes the inability to emphasize with patients and their experience
Seeing the same awful conditions day in day out, every patient experiencing the same same awful conditions, creates a blur effect where the patient experiences are ‘normal’… what you describe is a symptom of the problem… not a seperate entity!
Many doctors focus on the hours as the biggest factor affecting their decision to leave because they can no longer represent their patient as an advocate… they have been so broken by a system that is fundamentally flawed!
A doctor’s first duty is to ensure that they are ‘competent’…. sleep deprivation, excessive work, lack of food, decreased social interactions and high pressure environments have resulted in the highest suicide rates by profession and the high emigration that is seen… and those circumstances are seen as the standard.
Many patients experience is poor due to the interaction by the staff… not the trolley wait! Healthcare is broken and it needs a collective effort to fix it! Blaming those who leave is not a solution; nor is making those who stay work 2 jobs, because the government wont fund proper staffing!
@Viola Bingham:
I disagree big time with ya Viola. I spent 18 months on the road in my early 20′s and quickly realised that with no qualification, my options were limited. I returned to Ireland and did an apprenticeship in my mid to late 20′s and left for Australia at 28. A decade later I now am fortunate enough to only work 6 months a year and get paid a decent salary. It’s a no brainer to want the best possible life for yourself, is it not? To say people are being immoral for wanting that sounds a little begrudging to me. We have feck all time here after all, might as well give it the best shot you can.
@Viola Bingham: ‘immoral’ ha ha!
@Viola Bingham: plenty of people who aren’t doctors emigrate. Patients do suffer when doctors and nurses leave but should these doctors and nurses not also be allowed to consider their own health and a work life balance to have a better family life? I don’t necessarily think they should be expected to work themselves to ridiculous levels of stress just because they were educated here (a large portion of which time they are working and training already).
@Viola Bingham: so sad you think that way…go and shadow a doctor for one day and see how you are totally misrepresenting them. They work ridiculous hours with little break huge responsibility and always under staffed. They only think of the patients in my experience..constantly putting their own needs secondary to patients.
Only half of medical students in Ireland are Irish born, remainder are overseas students. Two reasons for this, 1.overseas students pay large fees 2. It keeps number of Irish doctors low, scarcity in numbers creates larger salaries. Best paid consultants in Europe are in Ireland. Medical Council control intake of numbers. So, increase number of Irish students, insist they sign contract for five years work after qualification or pay full fees like others who leave to go back to own countries after qualification. Problem will resolve in ten years.
@acallkelly: Colleges use foreign medical students are a source of revenue. The foreign students essentially subsidize the Irish ones. Instead of making doctors serfs of the state, might be an idea to improve working conditions so that doctors aren’t forced to work 24 hr shifts and break working hours laws – i.e give them the rights that every other worker in the state has.
@acallkelly: untrue
@acallkelly: IT graduates and Google employees earn way more than medical graduates. Nobody suggesting they’re targeted.
@acallkelly: The HSE have put out propaganda regarding consultants, their work practices and public salaries for years which are frankly misleading, which you are now regurgitating. Ireland has fewer consultants per capita than almost any other country in the OECD, working in a health service with an inadequate number of hospital beds hence working harder under more pressure. Irish doctors emigrate not to mainland Europe which is the salary yardstick the HSE prefers to use for comparison, but to other English speaking countries where medical incomes are higher (US, Canada, Australia) or after tax provide similar standard of living (UK).
If as you claim consultants in Ireland are paid so much, why are there over 500 unfilled posts, why are there decreasing numbers of applicants?
In the Nordics Doctors earn about the same as teachers. Really. As do dentists. And keep in mind that the average experienced teacher’s salary in Ireland is significantly higher than there too. They move here for what you call “reasonably high salaries” but let’s be honest: they’re only “reasonably high” in comparison to the United States. They’re above every single other EU member state.
The health service is a mess. We should have proper universal care either through a mandated insurance system or a single payer system, but you know as well as everyone else that Doctors and Consultants fight against those kind of changes left and right because they know that it would bring their salaries down to European norms because the system itself would have greater ability to mandate reasonable pay.
So I don’t want to hear about how tough the job is here. It’s doctors groups that are helping to enable that awful culture. The fact that so many of them are educated here and then leave is damning of that culture that their representatives help to continue.
And don’t get me wrong, Doctors are extremely highly trained professionals and deserve excellent pay, but when it’s so out of whack with all of our neighbours that’s a problem. When a country of 5 million people is spending 20 billion euro a year on public health, without even considering how much is being spent privately, that’s a problem. Work with the next health minister instead of constant opposition to good and reasonable changes.
@james: Dont believe the government spin, Pay for doctors in Ireland is not higher than every other state: https://www.quora.com/Which-countries-are-physicians-paid-the-most
Thats why they wont come here to work and our doctors are leaving
@james: The non-consultant doctor salary scale in Ireland starts at 37,000E and goes up to about 70,000E, the average is in the 50,000E range. For the level of responsibility, qualifications and working conditions I don’t think you could consider this as excessive pay. Certainly, other professionals in the private sector can commend salaries well above this – law, accountancy, engineering.
@james: That’s a lie. I have worked as a doctor in Sweden. They certainly earn more than teachers. A doctor working in Germany can earn in a par with what one earns here. The health service is not a mess. It works extremely well for the majority of patients. If you don’t want to hear about what a challenging profession medicine is, then don’t read the articles or comment on them.
@james: why do doctors not deserve to be paid well..they work hard achieve high academic standard to train as doctors and take on huge responsibility .I would prefer to pay doctors than bankers tv/ radio hosts ..to be honest I cant bear the begrudgery and I am not a doctor or nurse
@james: Interesting.
Currently I could go to New Zealand, USA, Canada or Australia and earn far more. At least double in most places. I could go to the UK and earn a very similar wage for better conditions and training. In all countries I would reach consultant status sooner as well.
Most of my colleagues have no opposition to a public only or social healthcare system, I’m all for it. I mean, it won’t happen here because to be very frank the Irish population would rather rag on doctors than protest about the absolute disaster of a health service we have. So the Irish people are every bit to blame for this and I won’t apologise for saying it because I get enough begrudgery flung at me for working my arse off and being told my profession is the problem. At the end of the day, if health was a big agenda for politicians getting votes, they’d be more inclined to try and fix it. It isn’t so they don’t bother.
This isn’t easy, the system is a state and there are so many hurdles to get over. We would need huge drive from the voting public to support politicians to actually bring reform. That hasn’t happened and from my perspective, it won’t happen. Privatisation is coming in force.
@Damon16: if you work out the long unpaid hours junior doctor put in they would earn more per hour in McDonald’s
They’re probably going to be the first wave of Irish Climate Change victims Climate Refugees moving back to Ireland from Australia which will in turn put more pressure on our Housing Crisis & schools! but it might improve our health care system & hospitals
@Kev: 2/10 for the wind up effort
S’truth!!!
My Doctor who was approaching retirement summer it up well a couple of years ago. “If you are young, can get double the money for less work and spend your weekends on the beach who can blame them”:… ok he really said “spend your weekends looking at girls in bikinis”
Silly system anyway, hoping people will stay after spending a fortune on training. A health system is supposed to provide for its sick and injured citizens. It’s not to fulfill the working dreams of Irish people. Sick people don’t really care where their carer is from. Better to offer the doctor and nurse training to non-EU nationals and then the state has some control over what happens after their qualified.
A neurologist that was looking after me recently split to Australia. I miss that Doctor badly.
A big draw used to be the perfect climate in Oz. Not any more…
The artical has zero facts or original thought. Just, I went to oz on a jolly and talked to some people. A lot of professions seem to thrive in oz: engineers, quantity surveyors, accountants….. We have one of the most productive private sectors in Europe. We also have multinationals out the Waze here. Perhaps we are just a nation with the right aptitudes to thrive in english speaking nations and cultures. Perhaps not. No real insight
Would say some of them are thinking about coming back give me a drizzling rainy day instead of smoke and fumes any day
I dont really know much about this subject but it seems to me like junior doctors are treated much like junior teachers i.e. Do all the work, for longer, for less pay while the Senior Staff clean up. The old are eating the young. They pulled up the ladder. Also, EVERY private consultant I’ve ever seen for a “consultation” (which basically means you pay them 180 for something you both already know) their card machine is “broken” and I have to PAY IN CASH. I bet I’m not the only one. So my perception is that not only are these Senior “Colleagues” laughing all the way to the bank they also are also avoiding tax. GREED and incompetent management are destroying the HSE.
The weather the beaches and the flying doctors that’s some job to have
@Liam Mc Meel: I agree,
Hanging out in smoke filled beaches while the countryside around you burns sounds just like some sort of utopia….
Plus very high rates of Income tax, PRSI and USC
Substitute the word doctor for nurse, teacher… Same story
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