- Data from the 2021 Census indicates that 11,838 of 60,312 workers within the health sector were not born in Northern Ireland.
- The Belfast Trust told FactCheckNI that 800 of the 1,700 graduate nurses – around 47.1% – employed between April 2021 and March 2023 were from abroad.
- Various parts of the Health and Social Care system actively engage in overseas recruitment drives.
On 12 August, the Alliance Party published an “evidence paper” around immigration into Northern Ireland, which claimed:
“…nearly 12,000 [immigrants] work in the Health and Social Care (HSC) system… So badly needed is this international expertise that the Department of Health has, in the past, initiated overseas recruitment drives to bolster the local workforce, and in 2023, it was reported that international nurses made up more than 40% of the nurse graduates recruited by the Belfast Trust during the preceding two years.”
There are two aspects to this claim:
- Nearly 12,000 immigrants work in HSC.
- Between 2021 and 2023, over 40% of the graduate nurses recruited by the Belfast Trust are from abroad.
Both are supported by evidence.
On the first aspect, and taking “immigrant” to mean someone not from Northern Ireland, data from the latest Census (2021) shows that 10,044 health professionals and 1,794 health and social care associate professionals, for a total of 11,838 workers, were born outside Northern Ireland.
For the second, FactCheckNI could not find publicly-available data to support or refute this claim. We contacted the Trust, which confirmed that it recruited a total of 1,700 graduate nurses between April 2021 and March 2023 and that 800 of those were international recruits (47.1%).
For more information, read on.
- Sources
We contacted the Alliance Party about these claims.
They pointed us to data from the 2021 Census published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).
The party also highlighted foreign recruitment drives with links to news articles from 2016 and 2018, as well as comments in the media from May 2023 attributed to the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust’s Deputy Director of Nursing, stating that 800 international graduate nurses were recruited by the Trust during the last 2 years, representing more than 40% of the recruits in the Trust.
Let’s take a closer look.
- Healthy system
The claim states that nearly 12,000 immigrants work in the Health and Social Care (HSC) system.
The latest Census took place in 2021, and contains cross-sectional information on the type of job people hold and whether they were born in Northern Ireland or abroad. Categories of job include both “health professional” and “health and social care associate professional”.
According to data published by NISRA, at the time Census information was gathered a total of 10,044 health professionals and 1,794 health and social care associate professionals were born outside Northern Ireland, for a total of 11,838 people – which supports the claim.
Census information is a snapshot of the time the data is gathered but this remains the best-available information for the relationship between individuals’ professions and whether or not they were born here.
The same Census data states that a total of 48,474 people who were born in NI work in the health sector (38,730 health professionals and 9,744 health and social care associate professionals).
A quick calculation shows that around 19.6% of all people working in health in Northern Ireland were born elsewhere, according to the Census – almost 12,000 out of the 60, 312 total.
It is worth noting that “born elsewhere” in this case includes people born elsewhere in the UK or Ireland – this is one valid definition for “immigrant”, as per the claim, although immigration into NI is often taken to mean changing the place of residence from outside the UK (or outside UK and Ireland) .
- Belfast Trust
The second aspect of the claim concerns recruitment by the Belfast Trust.
Is it accurate to say that, between 2021 and 2023, 40% of new nurse recruits were from abroad?
According to a May 2023 report from ITV News, this is the case. However, news reports are not themselves primary sources of information, in the same way that a fact check is not.
FactCheckNI was unable to find publicly-available data that indicates whether this claim is accurate or inaccurate (if you know of any, please get in touch). However, we contacted the Belfast Trust and a spokesperson confirmed that between April 2021 to March 2023 over 800 international nurses were hired alongside 900 local nurses.
The Trust also said that international nurse graduate recruits are specifically those hired through overseas recruitment drives in countries such as the Philippines, India, and Romania.
Given that 800 recruits from a total of 1,700 is around 47.1%, this supports the claim.
It is also worth noting, in contrast to the first aspect of this claim, the immigration here focuses on people from outside the UK specifically – “international” workers rather than “immigrants”, as per the claim.
- Wider context
The latest official data on staffing and vacancies was published by the Department of Health on 21 August and contains data that was correct as of 30 June. Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Active Recruitment Statistics notes that:
- The highest number of vacancies actively being recruited across HSC was in the Registered Nursing & Midwifery staff group, with 1,211. This staff group made up 22.5% of all HSC vacancies in recruitment.
- The Nursing & Midwifery Support staff group had the highest vacancy rate, at 8.4% (464 vacancies).
A statement published on the same day by the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) said:
“An RCN survey has shown that 83% of nursing staff in Northern Ireland said that the actual number of nursing staff on their last shift was not sufficient to meet patients’ needs safely and effectively. Only 17% of nursing staff agreed that they had enough time to provide the level of care they would like, whilst just over one-quarter (28%) said that they were able to provide the quality of care that they themselves would want to receive as a patient. Some 56% (the highest percentage across the UK) said that too much time was taken up on non-nursing duties. The survey also found that almost two-thirds (60%) of nursing staff were unable to take the breaks they were supposed to take during their last shift. A similar proportion (64%) worked additional hours on their last shift, of which 82% did so unpaid.”
