Despite a strong recruitment drive abroad and new initiatives to attract and retain nurses at home there is still a significant reliance on overtime and agency nurses in the country's hospitals.
The new figures were contained in the final report of the Steering Group on Nursing and Midwifery, published today by the Department of Health.
'Running to stand still' was how the Irish Nurses' Organisation described the challenge of filling vacancies throughout the country.
Despite years of focussing on the problem of attracting and retaining nurses, progress has been slow and there are still 1,000 vacancies in nursing nationwide.
Today's report was welcomed by representative bodies, with Des Kavanagh of the Psychiatric Nurses' Association saying that 'finally hard factual information is now available' from the Department of Health.
But the PNA and the Irish Nurses' Organisation expressed concern that the decrease in vacancies since 2000 is minimal at just 4% overall. Both groups said that the recent benchmarking report did not effectively address pay and conditions of employment, something that the Government must now do.
However, the Minister for Health, Michael Martin, said that there has been a 40% increase in nurse training places in the past three to four years and in the coming years this will reduce the number of vacancies in the country's hospitals.
