Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has today published a paper on Ireland’s future health and social care workforce.

The paper forms part of the Department’s long-term health and social care workforce planning projections and the work underway to plan for workforce needs. This planning is necessary in the context of a growing and ageing population, rising chronic diseases levels, and high reliance on overseas-educated workers amid a global shortage of healthcare workers.

According to the paper, there is an urgent need to build the future supply of healthcare workers. It sets out an “evidence-based strategic direction” for the workforce for the next 15 years.

The Economic and Social Research Institute’s Capacity Reviews, commissioned by the Department of Health, informed the demand projections within this paper.  Projections and gap analysis show an expectation of a shortfall across health and social care staff categories modelled.

The analysis also demonstrates that with the implementation of planned health policies and workforce reforms there will be an average annual growth rate required of approximately 1.4 per cent to 2 per cent from 2023 to 2040 for the professions modelled. Population demographics are the major driver for this increased demand.

According to the paper, a whole of Government response is required to support the higher education institutions to significantly expand student capacity to meet the future needs of the health, disability and education sectors.

Minister Carroll MacNeill said: “This paper is an important step to ensure that we have the appropriate size of health and social care workforce in place to deliver Programme for Government commitments and Sláintecare 2025+. Sláintecare reform is transforming how healthcare is delivered in Ireland, building towards equal access to services for every person based on their need and not their ability to pay.

“Our health and social care workforce is our strongest asset. Every day, across a wide range of settings, they go to extraordinary lengths to deliver care to thousands of people. However, our modelling projections are showing that if we continue on our current trajectory, we will not have a sufficient number of health and social care workers in the future.

“In recent years, significant investment has been made in the workforce.  Substantial progress has been made to build capacity and improve the availability of health professionals to support integrated care across the entire health service and to deliver on modernised care pathways.

 “Developing a dynamic, agile workforce and increasing the domestic supply of health and social care professionals, will be essential to ensuring an economically sustainable workforce that can meet the health needs of our growing and ageing population.”

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless, said: “I welcome the publication of the paper on Ireland’s Future Health and Social Care Workforce, which sets out a clear, evidence-based vision for meeting health and social care workforce needs over the next 15 years. My Department strongly supports this long-term approach and the shared ambition to expand domestic education and training capacity. Since 2022, more than 1,300 additional training places have been delivered across priority health and social care disciplines, with a further 600 places on track for 2026.

“Delivering this vision will require continued cross-Government collaboration and sustained investment. Significant funding has been secured for 2025–2026 and beyond, and my officials and the HEA [Higher Education Authority] are progressing further expressions of interest to the sector to expand training capacity where it is most needed. I remain committed to working with the Minister for Health to ensure we have the skilled workforce required to deliver high-quality health and social care services into the future.”

The paper is available here: https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/c68b88d0/Irelands_Future_Health_and_Social_Care_Workforce.pdf

Newly published research funded by the Health Research Board and the Irish College of GPs has examined GP emigration from Ireland through analysis of international data. The study ‘GP emigration from Ireland: an analysis of data from key destination countries’ was published recently in BMC Health Services Research.

The study attempts to quantify GP emigration from Ireland by presenting secondary data on GP emigration from Ireland to Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. These are the key destination countries for doctors (including GPs) emigrating from Ireland. Of note the study could not quantify doctors returning to Ireland from abroad, as Irish citizens would not need to notify authorities.

The authors state: “Source countries, such as Ireland, must get better at monitoring and responding to emerging trends in GP emigration and factoring them into GP workforce planning models and policies.”

The study indicates that without a central register of GPs in Ireland, it is difficult to accurately measure emigration rates, and with no measurement of Irish-trained GPs returning to the Irish workforce, it is also difficult to give an accurate picture of the emigration and migration trends.

The study highlights the historical pattern of GP emigration, particularly to the UK, with a cohort “who could be encouraged to return to practice in Ireland in the future”. Policies to encourage return migration of Irish-trained GPs “could form part of Ireland’s strategy for addressing the GP workforce crisis”.

The study mentions that in 2021-2022, 42 GPs from the entire GP workforce (equating to approximately 1 per cent of all GPs) emigrated to the countries studied, while there were 144 new GP graduates that year. In addition, the authors had no visibility of GPs returning to Ireland from these countries. The number of GPs who emigrated in 2022-2023 was substantially reduced, indicating the variability of these data from year to year. Inability to account for GPs returning to Ireland renders the true picture incomplete, as acknowledged by the authors. “Ireland must begin to capture and publish this data to enable the development of an accurate and up to date picture of patterns of GP emigration, GP return and GP retention and to strengthen GP workforce planning.”

The CEO of the Irish College of GPs, Mr Fintan Foy, said: “This is a significant piece of research, which highlights the challenges of retaining our GPs in Ireland, and the gaps in our knowledge for workforce planning. While we would wish all our GPs to stay and work in Ireland, we are heartened by the relatively low level of GP emigration, particularly in recent years, and indicators that this continues to decline.”

He added: “The College’s own career intentions surveys (2023) show only 14 per cent of trainees and 18 per cent of graduates are considering emigration, while the HSE-NDTP reports a retention rate of 87 per cent for 2016-2021 graduates.”

The Chair of the College’s Board, Dr Deirdre Collins, said: “It is essential to put this research in context. While it cited emigration rates having a 30 per cent impact on workforce, the study authors are clear this calculation comes with significant caveats and they could not account for returning GPs. We urgently need more data collected on the return rates for Irish-trained GPs.”

The study’s researchers were Dr Holly Rose Hanlon, Dr Eidin Ni She, Dr John-Paul Byrne, Dr Susan M Smith, Dr Andrew W Murphy, Dr Aileen Barrett, Dr Mike O’Callaghan and Dr Niamh Humphries.

The study can be read here: https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-024-12117-2