HSE Using JobBridge To Find Mental Health Worker 'Abhorrent' - SF

The Health Service Executive using JobBridge to look for someone with a psychology degree and a psychology masters with relevance to a clinical area to take on a job working with the Waterford Mental Health Services has been described as "abhorrent".

Criticising the move, Sinn Féin Youth Affairs spokesperson, Senator Kathryn Reilly, said: "With all the government talk about recovery over the past few months one would be guilty of assuming that there would be more properly paid jobs available for young people and not internships with minimal pay. Young people need careers not internships.

"This is a job opportunity and for the HSE to advertise this and offer it as a JobBridge internship is a complete scandal. How the HSE can stand over such a state of affairs is a mystery.

"If we genuinely want to keep young Irish people at home, then we need to stop paying pauper wages for real jobs. JobBridge is being and has been exploited, not least by certain private employers, but it is now clearly being exploited by organs of the state, and by that definition the current government are complicit in such exploitation.  

"It is clear to all that what has happened in this instance is that a genuine job opportunity working in the Mental Health Services area being pawned off as a JobBridge internship. This is completely unacceptable, what is needed is for the role to be offered as a full time paid job whatever applicant is successful.

"It is frivolous to bemoan the number of young people leaving Ireland when organisations like the HSE offer internships and inadequate wages for real jobs. If such practices continue it is difficult to see our young people choosing to stay here ahead of moving abroad where they can get genuine employment and will have more advantageous career prospects."

(MH/JP)