The largest children's hospital in the State, which had to defer surgery on two-year-old Róisín Ruddle in 2003 due to a shortage of intensive care nurses, is still short 33 of these specialist nurses, it confirmed yesterday.
However, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin said it had appointed a nurse manager to work full-time on nurse recruitment and retention.
It said it had travelled over the past few years to Bahrain, the Philippines, the UK and Poland to recruit nurses. It will travel to India this month to interview 140 nurses.
The hospital added that eight nurses it recruited were waiting to be registered with An Bord Altranais and a further 22 were due to take up duty "in the next few months".
The report into the death of Róisín Ruddle accused hospital management of not addressing the nursing shortage seriously at an earlier stage.
The hospital said a number of the report's 13 recommendations had already been acted on. A clinical bed manager was appointed in August 2004 and it had established systems of daily communication with other hospitals in Dublin to ensure optimal use of paediatric ICU beds.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) said not enough was being done to recruit and retain Irish-trained nurses and to reward those who spent years specialising. Latest official figures indicate there were 771 nursing vacancies across the State at the end of September 2004 and the situation will be exacerbated by no nurses qualifying this year, due to the changeover to a nursing degree programme.
The INO's general secretary Mr Liam Doran will meet the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Ms Harney, today and hopes she will approve funding for a number of Irish nurses to train in paediatric intensive care nursing in the UK every year.
The New Crumlin Hospital Group, a lobby group of parents campaigning for the redevelopment of the hospital, wants the chairman of the hospital to reassess the composition of the hospital's Committee of Management given the criticism levelled at it.