Almost a third of newly qualified doctors from Irish universities move abroad in the years after they finish their studies with fewer than half returning within 10 years, new figures from the Central Statistics Office suggest.
The data, which is based on those who graduated in 2012 identified how many had left Ireland after qualifying and how many were resident in Ireland again at the time of the 2022 census.
It found that 30 per cent of medicine graduates, 132 in total, had left Ireland for a time and that 51 of those, or 39 per cent, were subsequently living in Ireland 10 years after qualification.
The statistics do not take account of the significant proportion of medical students attending Irish universities who are from overseas to begin with. A substantial portion of the current medical workforce, up to half in some areas, is also made up of doctors who obtained their qualifications overseas with Pakistan, Sudan and South Africa among the best represented nationalities.
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The proportion of nursing and midwifery graduates who moved away was found to be higher, at 37 per cent, with 489 2012 graduates having left Ireland but far more, 303, or 62 per cent, subsequently returned within the decade.
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A majority of nurses registering for the first time in Ireland in recent years qualified abroad.
Irish graduates of all medical disciplines are routinely the targets of recruitment campaigns in locations like Australia and the Middle East, where they work in significant numbers.
Commenting on the numbers, CSO statistician Brian Stanley said the numbers of those listed as having moved abroad were based on those not “captured” in administrative data in at least one of the years that followed.
“While it is assumed that graduates who were ‘not captured’ have emigrated,” he said, “there is no definitive indicator of emigration available.”
The study found that 95 per cent of medicine graduates and 88 per cent of nurses and midwives were working in those respective areas a decade after leaving their courses.
It found, meanwhile, that the divide between those working in the public and private sectors in Ireland was almost identical a decade after they had qualified.
Seventy per cent of nurses/midwives and 71 per cent of doctors who qualified in 2013 were employed within the public health service 10 years later, the figures indicate.
The statistics indicate that male graduates, whether in medicine or nursing, have higher average earnings within a year and that the pay gap between the genders widens significantly over the first decade of their careers.
In the case of doctors, males who graduated in 2013 earned an average of €26 more a week 12 months later and €790 more per week a decade later. In the case of nurses and midwives the differences were €30 and €219 respectively.
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