Ireland’s Future Health and Social Care Workforce paper, published in December 2025, sets out an evidence-based strategic direction for the health and social care workforce for the next 15 years. It details twenty actions to be taken in the years ahead to address future workforce challenges. These actions sit under five interconnected pillars; Plan, Build, Optimise Performance, Recruit & Retain and Invest.
As part of our commitment to the WHO Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, this paper includes an action to address the current and historic high reliance on international recruitment of health and social care workers. The projections set out in this paper are to 2040 and time will be required to reduce our high reliance on foreign educated health and social care workers. To achieve this, work will continue to build our domestic supply of health and social care workers. However, it must be acknowledged that due to education lags and capacity constraints within our higher education institutions, it will take several years to gradually reduce our high reliance.
According to the workforce modelling published in this paper, if we continue with current trends, the proportion of our health and social care workforce that is domestically educated will continue to decrease over a 15-year projection period. These projections are useful as it helps to demonstrate the scale of domestic student expansion required to meet our future needs. This allows us to plan a staged increase in student places up to 2030 to allow time for capacity in the higher education system to increase, while increasing supply and reducing our high reliance on foreign educated professionals. Further information is detailed in Ireland’s Health and Social Care Technical Note (assets.gov.ie/static/documents/5c7b3e74/Future_HSC_Workforce_Technical_Note.pdf).
Department of Health officials engage on an ongoing basis with colleagues in the HSE, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that we train enough graduates with the skills necessary to support the delivery of health and social care services and to develop a strategic approach to workforce planning for the health sector. Significant Government investment is being provided to expand healthcare education provision from 2025–2026 as a key part of addressing future supply of healthcare professionals and ensuring Ireland can meet growing healthcare needs.
The Minister for Further and Higher Education recently announced €28.5 million investment in 2026 to support the delivery of more than 1,100 additional healthcare training places over the next three years across medicine, nursing, therapy professions, pharmacy, dentistry. This investment includes a major expansion in Health and Social Care Profession Training Places announced by the Government in 2025, with 461 new places to be delivered in nine priority disciplines by 2028. A strong regional focus underpins current and future expansion efforts. The aim is to align training provision with geographic workforce needs by strengthening regional access to programmes, improving placement coordination across HSE Health Regions, and supporting workforce sustainability in underserved areas.
A further Expressions of Interest (EOI) for priority HSCP disciplines was launched by the Higher Education Authority on 30th April 2026. This provides an opportunity for Higher Education Institutions to propose new training programmes or expand existing programmes in high-priority areas related to the health, disability and education sectors. There will be close collaboration and a shared commitment across government to ensure that this EOI led expansion proceeds in line with regional capacity and workforce requirements.
Data that has been submitted to the WHO via the National Reporting Instrument in recent years is available on the National Reporting Instrument reports database. The online link for this database is: extranet.who.int/dataformv6/index.php/481216?langen
