The Irish department of health is asking, very nicely, for Australia to please give its doctors back.
Irish doctors working in Australia are the target of a new campaign from their home country’s Health Service Executive, which is now begging its doctors to return home.
Around 22% of Irish doctors who qualified as a specialist between 2016 and 2020 were working abroad as of 2025, with around one in five of these doctors believed to be working in Australia.
The proportion of unfellowed Irish doctors working abroad was even greater; in 2025, up to 60% of the 2024 interns were no longer working in the Irish health service.
In 2023, one recently-graduated University College Galway doctor estimated that about 70% of his cohort, who qualified in 2020, were working in Australia.
A 2021 paper published in Health Policy found that Australia was the most popular destination for Irish migrant doctors, with the number of working visas issued per year for Irish doctors having doubled from 153 in 2008 to 326 in 2017.
Some Australian clinics, like GP corporate Better Medical, even have pages appealing directly to Irish doctors.
“Doctors often tell us they value greater clinical autonomy, the flexibility to develop special interests such as skin cancer medicine, women’s health, and aged care, access to continuing education, and the ability to practise in a way that aligns with their interests and patients’ needs,” Better Medical director of medical services Dr Claire Broadley told The Medical Republic.
“Australia also offers diverse locations and lifestyles, strong schooling options and a work-life balance that appeals to many doctors and their families.”
According to Irish site Medical Independent, the Health Service Executive (HSE) – a department similar in scope to Australia’s Department of Health, Disability and Ageing – has now launched a targeted campaign called “Project Home” in an attempt to lure its doctors back.
Minutes from a November 2025 board meeting detailed plans to expand HSE’s available candidate pool through “targeted attraction and engagement strategies of Irish graduates who have travelled overseas”.
“This is an engagement initiative with our healthcare diaspora, in collaboration with the [Department of Foreign Affairs] and social and sporting networks abroad, to support the return of these healthcare workers to opportunities in Ireland,” the document reads.
The Medical Independent reported that there were plans in place to advertise the initiative at the recent Ireland-Australia rugby match (Ireland won, by the way; hopefully not a sign of things to come).
Digital advertisements for the campaign include taglines like “thinking of home? We’re ready when you’re ready”.
“Whether an Irish Government campaign encouraging doctors to return home is successful will ultimately depend on each individual’s circumstances,” Dr Broadley said.
“Many doctors have strong personal ties to Ireland and may choose to return for family or lifestyle reasons.
“However, career decisions are influenced by a broad range of professional and personal factors, and Australia will continue to be an attractive option for many GPs because of the breadth of career opportunities, flexibility and quality of life it offers.”
The 2021 Health Policy paper, which was based on in-depth interviews with Irish clinicians working in Australia, found that Ireland’s “extreme” working conditions were what drove doctors to look abroad.
Related
Professional relationships in Australia were perceived as less hierarchical, while staffing support and task coordination was seen as better than in Ireland.
In a somewhat ironic twist, the Irish researchers pointed out that the reason why Ireland’s hospitals were so comparatively under-resourced was partly because so many young doctors emigrated to work elsewhere.
“These organisational features of medical work did not function in isolation and were to some extent self-sustaining,” the authors wrote.
“Hierarchical professional relations in Irish hospitals were reinforced by low staffing and support, and low governance and task coordination.
“Work appeared to be structured primarily by the roster, individualised task prioritisation, and intra- and interprofessional hierarchies.
“The flatter professional hierarchy of Australian hospitals coincided with higher staffing and support levels and a range of formalised coordination mechanisms which facilitated intra and inter-professional collaboration.”
Importantly, the research also found that effective policies for doctor retention should improve the quality of doctors’ work experience rather than focus solely on supply side measures.
As in – perhaps just asking doctors to return to the system they left without having changed the system is not a winning strategy.
