HSE’s Failure to Fill Thousands of Funded Posts is a National Scandal – and the Soaring €720m Agency Bill Proves It
The revelation that the HSE has 3,700 funded jobs sitting vacant while simultaneously spending over €720 million on agency staff in a single year is nothing short of a systemic failure in workforce planning. This is not a marginal overspend or an unavoidable emergency measure. It is a structural problem—years in the making—that continues to place extraordinary pressure on frontline services while draining scarce public finances at an unprecedented rate.
Despite repeated pledges to reduce reliance on agency workers, the trend is accelerating. Up to August alone, the HSE spent €545 million on agency personnel, with €165.7m on support and social-care roles, €123.8m on agency nurses, and nearly €120m on temporary medical and dental staff. This comes at a time when thousands of permanent posts, already budgeted for, remain unfilled. Only 20% of HSE-funded posts approved for 2025 have actually been onboarded.
The consequence is a bizarre and wasteful contradiction: while the HSE claims it cannot recruit nurses, doctors, therapists, and care staff, it continues to pay premium rates for temporary replacements—sometimes double the cost of a salaried worker. Agency staff are, in many cases, essential to keep wards open—but their long-term use at this scale represents a profound misallocation of public money. It is, in essence, paying more to provide less.
Even more concerning is the impact on care continuity and staff morale. Constant turnover, lack of team integration, and inconsistent clinical leadership undermine patient outcomes and increase strain on existing full-time staff. And while the HSE talks about “global shortages,” Ireland’s diaspora—one of the most skilled, mobile, and internationally experienced in the world—remains largely untapped.
This is where Back 4 Good – Your Future in Ireland offers the only realistic, immediate, and cost-effective solution.
For more than a decade, Back 4 Good has built a trusted network across the Irish diaspora, including Irish-trained nurses, medics, healthcare managers, and allied health professionals currently working in the UK, EU, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, and the U.S. These are people who want to come home—but who need a competent, coordinated, and credible channel to do so.
Back 4 Good specialises in targeted return-home campaigns, hard-to-fill roles, and high-skill recruitment, delivering results for a fraction of what agency labour costs the State. Instead of a €720 million annual agency bill, Ireland could spend a fraction of that building stable, permanent staffing pipelines.
The HSE cannot continue with this broken model. Ireland cannot afford it. Patients cannot tolerate it.
Back 4 Good is ready today with the talent, the reach, and the diaspora networks to fill these roles—properly, permanently, and at a fair cost to taxpayers.
