Australia has embarked on a recruitment drive to attract nurses to relocate from Galway and the West.

The push to poach staff comes as nursing representatives here have highlighted fire safety concerns in the new Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway, and as health authorities struggle to fill nursing vacancies locally.

A team of six recruiters from two rural New South Wales local health districts (LHDs) are hosting an information session and interviews in Galway to recruit Irish nurses and midwives from Galway, Mayo and Sligo.

Murrumbidgee and Southern New South Wales, which has linked up with Galway recruitment agency ICE Group, is dangling attractive remuneration packages to help persuade Irish nurses to relocate.

The Australian recruitment drive comes as the INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation) highlighted safety fears at the new temporary Emergency Department at University Hospital Galway.

INMO Industrial Relations Officer, Western Region, Anne Burke described the ED as “unsafe”, and threatened to report UHG to the Chief Fire Officer.

In an email to UHG management in March, released to the Connacht Tribune under Freedom of Information (FOI), Ms Burke set out the “grossly unsafe working conditions” that her members had to endure in the ED, which were “clearly not conducive to the safe and timely provision of care to patients”.

Ms Burke urged management to outline what it was doing to “reverse the fire breaches” and to “mitigate against the health and safety risks that exist within the department at present”.

In response, Maria Molloy, Deputy General Manager at the city hospital said all aspects of fire safety “are reviewed as a matter of priority daily and as required”.

The recruitment drive for nurses also comes as the health service locally struggles to fill nursing vacancies in various healthcare settings.

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