Nurses have severely criticised the HSE for attempting ‘to force students and newly qualified nurses and midwives into its low pay graduate scheme'.

According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), the HSE has advised local managers that the only positions available for nurses and midwives who are newly qualified are on its graduate scheme.

However, this scheme only pays 85% of the staff nurse/midwife rate of pay in the first year and 90% in the second year.

"Additionally it is understood that employers have been advised that nurses and midwives who are employed on temporary contracts, having qualified in 2011 and 2012, should be let go and only taken back as part of the scheme," the unions explained.

They said that according to the Haddington Road Agreement, positions filled as part of the graduate scheme ‘are in addition to the employment ceiling for the health service and they cannot be used to replace existing fillable vacancies'.

"Further the agreement only allows for recruitment under the scheme where there is a significant spend on agency or overtime in an employment area.

"Suggesting that the scheme is now the only route to employment in the health service is an attempt to bully students and newly qualified nurses and midwives and is contrary to the commitment given in the Haddington Road Agreement, that normal HSE recruitment would continue side by side with the graduate scheme," the unions insisted.

In a letter to Barry O'Brien, the HSE's national director of human resources, they call on him to clarify to the managers concerned ‘that this is a graduate scheme aimed at graduates which will only apply where there is agency or overtime cost'.

They also call on him to confirm to employers that graduate scheme recruits ‘cannot be used to displace registered nurses currently occupying fillable nurse staff vacancies'.

The unions said that Mr O'Brien's co-operation in this matter is required urgently.