Cllr Emmet Doyle: Irish Students Rendered Ineligible for Medical Internships by HSE
Responding to worrying reports of HSE barring Irish students from the north of Ireland from Medical Internships, Aontú Cllr for Derry & Candidate for the Foyle Constituency, Emmet Doyle, has hit out at the decision to bar medical students from interning with the HSE – at a time when healthcare capacity of the HSE has been so thoroughly decimated.
Cllr Emmet Doyle: “It is a slap in the face for medical students on the island of Ireland to be barred from interning with the HSE, especially when the HSE needs staff. These are students on the island of Ireland, who are being told they are ineligible to work in the HSE, because the HSE is enforcing partition to our cost. These are students who are talented and capable, but are facing flagrant discrimination because of where their postcode is situated. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we have been repeatedly told that the pandemic does not recognise borders. Yet the HSE is contradicting that message by imposing a hard border on the healthcare of the Irish people. I call upon the Fianna Fáil Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, to clarify whether the HSE is preventing students from the island of Ireland interning in the HSE and if this is the case to order the immediate cessation of this discriminatory policy.”
