But there\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n
The care home\u2019s owners say an inability to recruit sufficient staff from within Ireland and Europe \u2013 along with official restrictions on staff that a business can hire from farther afield \u2013 may leave the building standing largely empty until planned legislative changes are put in place.<\/p>\n
Orwell Healthcare, which owns the facility, says in the meantime it has to pay staff currently in place and meet other costs while no revenue is coming in.<\/p>\n
Laura Dunne, deputy chief executive of Orwell Healthcare, says there are already 150 people on a waiting list for the new nursing home. She says the main hospital in the locality, St James\u2019s, is anxiously waiting to move in patients who have completed their acute care.<\/p>\n
Legislation introduced in 2024 requires that at least half of an employer\u2019s workforce come from Ireland, the UK, EU, the broader European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland before the business can seek an employment permit to bring in staff from elsewhere in the world. <\/p>\n
The other 50 per cent can include employment-permit holders, beneficiaries of international or temporary protection or those holding \u201cstamps\u201d giving them residency in Ireland. <\/p>\n
Alan Dillon, Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment, says this policy fulfils Ireland\u2019s obligations under what is known as the \u201cunion preference\u201d principles of EU membership. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe mandatory application of the 50:50 rule underpins the Government\u2019s employment creation strategy by compelling employers in the State to hire in a balanced manner from domestic and EEA labour markets,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
However, Dunne says her company and others in the sector have experienced significant difficulty in operating within these rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we could get people from the EU, we\u2019d happily do it, but they\u2019re scarce,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, we\u2019ve been recruiting from Ireland for Irish and EU staff, and we also recruit overseas, mainly the Philippines and India, for nursing staff. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn Europe, it\u2019s very difficult. There\u2019s a huge shortage of EU [nurses]. If they were there, we\u2019d happily recruit them. We have engaged with EU recruiters from Romania and Hungary to try to get Hungarian and Romanian nurses \u2013 and then the 50:50 [rule] wouldn\u2019t apply. But we haven\u2019t been successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunne says private nursing homes are also competing with the Health Service Executive (HSE) for staff but it has an advantage; she cannot match the State\u2019s public health system on pay and overtime rates. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, we\u2019re not the same as the HSE, but we have a very good pay rate and a very good package for people coming to the country. We provide subsidised accommodation for them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Dunne says nursing homes face additional pressure: staff leaving to work in HSE and other public hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe bring in the staff. They might be newly qualified [as nurses] in India. We do a huge amount of training and induction training with them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the HSE will happily take them because they know in the nursing homes they\u2019ve got great training. So they\u2019ll recruit and we can\u2019t compete with the pay rates and the overtime rates. So we lose a lot of our staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6KCPDKSTENFTZPUF2DA65T7SKQ.jpg\")
One of the empty rooms in Garville Private in Rathgar, south Dublin. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne for The Irish Times <\/p>\n
She says these staff work for the nursing home for years \u2013 part of the legal requirement of their employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd after two years, they look to the HSE. They are going to the HSE because [for example] they will get a year\u2019s maternity leave and all those kind of things that private nursing homes can\u2019t provide,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The nursing home sector has been strongly lobbying the Government to change the law around the 50:50 rule.<\/p>\n
Both the representative body for the sector and individual nursing homes have contacted the Department of Enterprise and Employment, which is responsible for the legislation.<\/p>\n
In July 2025, , Cowper Care, which has 182 residents across three nursing homes, told Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke it was \u201cfacing an acute staffing crisis, particularly in the recruitment of nurses and healthcare assistants\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cDespite our sustained efforts, we are receiving no applications from EEA nationals for these vital roles\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n
Dillon says the department carried out a review of the 50:50 rule and in May the Cabinet agreed to a change of policy.<\/p>\n
The departmental review said Ireland applied \u201cone of the strictest interpretations of union preference at employer level and while most sectors comply with the 50:50 rule, healthcare has recently begun to face acute challenges due to significant uptake of healthcare assistant permits\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cDemand for these permits is expected to rise sharply due to demographic change and limited Irish\/EEA\/UK\/Swiss supply. Retention issues, driven by low pay and poor conditions, risk creating a cycle of dependency on migrant workers without addressing underlying workforce stability,\u201d the review said.<\/p>\n
The review found the Department of Health\u2019s long-term strategy was to build domestic labour capacity, \u201cbut interim measures are required to maintain service continuity\u201d.<\/p>\n
It recommended changing the law to give new powers to the Minister to alter the 50:50 rule for specific sectors.<\/p>\n
The department said the legislative amendments were intended to allow the Minister to temporarily adjust the 50:50 rule provisions \u201cin the health and social care sectors only, on the basis of its role in delivering vital services for the public good\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Government is coming under pressure both from nursing homes to accelerate the introduction of the new measures and from the haulage sector to extend the reforms.<\/p>\n
In a letter to Dillon on June 10th, Irish Road Haulage Association president Ger Hyland expressed concern \u201cthat the proposed reform, as currently understood, may be confined to healthcare-related employments only\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe road freight sector faces a similarly acute and persistent labour shortage. Haulage operators across the State continue to experience significant difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of qualified heavy goods vehicle drivers from within Ireland and the wider EEA labour market,\u201d Hyland said in a letter. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese shortages exist despite sustained recruitment efforts, competitive remuneration packages and substantial investment in training and retention initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just off Garville Avenue in Rathgar, south Dublin, a five-storey white-painted building that should be home to scores…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[275],"tags":[111050,61384,18,135,475,24728,2450,474,19,17,3456,4772,56871],"class_list":["post-650550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alan-dillon","tag-department-of-enterprise-trade-and-employment","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-information-and-quality-authority-hiqa","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nursing-homes","tag-peter-burke","tag-rathgar"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117138666404679370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}