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Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was unaware of the serious delays in processing a-typical working visa applications in his department for overseas healthcare workers, he told the Dáil.
Mr Varadkar said he would discuss the issue with his secretary general after Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said visa processing that previously took two days was now taking up to three months and preventing the recruitment of healthcare staff, the Tánaiste said.
“If it wasn’t for the department dragging their heels we could have 200 additional nurses in Ireland by the end of the month,” Mr Doherty said.
With 7,000 frontline healthcare staff out sick and hospital systems under major strain to cope with the massive surge in Covid-19 cases Mr Doherty said hospital ICU capacity was expected to be used up by the weekend.
He said the failure to build additional capacity left the State reliant on surge capacity and 30 per cent of private hospitals.
But the Tánaiste said the State could have access to 60 per cent of private beds. They had secured 30 per cent and can ask for and were negotiating an additional 30 per cent.
Hitting out at the lack of action on recruiting staff, Mr Doherty said there is a pool of 1,500 doctors, nurses and other staff, many of them “job ready”, under the Call for Ireland initiative, who were willing to take up work but who have not yet been deployed, he said.
The Donegal TD said the RCSI had to cancel 200 exams for nurses due to the delay in processing the visa applications.
The Tánaiste told him that he had not been informed of the delays in visa processing. It had not been brought to his attention by the HSE or by the Minister for Health.
He said he would investigate the issue but stressed that visa applications had to be processed properly.
On hospital capacity, Mr Varadkar said “we may see the total number of people being admitted to hospital fall in about a week’s time” and the numbers in ICU dropping in two weeks.
However “hospitals will be in a very difficult, very precarious and very dangerous situation for the next two weeks”.
Independent TD Cathal Berry said the IT system was not in place in nursing homes and this was a real difficulty for the roll-out of the vaccine.
But he said there was “21st-century technology” running alongside “13th-century means of recording them, pen and paper”.
Mr Varadkar said an IT system had been delivered to HSE in December but additional elements of the system will be added. It is a pen and paper exercise at the moment but he had been assured that the system would be ready when it was needed.
The Tánaiste also told the Kildare TD that they were considering some form or honorarium for volunteers working in testing centres after Dr Berry said there were thousands of volunteers who had given up their time to work in testing centres. They were initially in place for two weeks but were now there for 10 months.
Mr Varadkar said the details of such a payment had not yet been worked out.