Irish Nurses in the NHS: launch event in Dublin Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre

14 April 2025

The Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill officially launched the book Irish Nurses in the NHS: an oral history at a ceremony in Dublin.

The launch was hosted by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), one of the funders and partner organisations which has supported the oral history project from the outset. The event attracted a large audience of nurses, researchers and members of the general public.

The publishers, Four Courts Press, were on hand to run a book stall at the launch. The book continues to enjoy success and is now into its third print run. The book reached number four in the Irish Times bestsellers list for non-fiction books in March 2025 and stayed around the top ten books for many weeks in succession.

Based on 45 interviews, this book tells the stories of Irish nurses in their own words using rich oral history and photographs. From the rigours of training to the fun of dancehalls, the book explores their life experiences as nurses and also as Irish migrants in British society.

From the inception of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, Irish women and men were actively recruited to train and work as nurses in British hospitals. By the 1960s approximately 30,000 Irish-born nurses were working across the NHS, constituting around 12% of all nursing staff.  In telling this story, the book aims to celebrate the remarkable contribution of Irish nurses to health care in Britain.

The book has been widely reviewed and received high praise:

“The voices of 45 Irish Nurses form the backbone of this comprehensive study of the invaluable contribution made by Irish nurses to the NHS ... The voices are wonderful – charming and funny, yet serious and revealing ... The warmth of these women’s voices is palpable, one feels what they must have been like on the ward, busy, hardworking but also chatty and fun.” Martina Evans, the Irish Times.

“Reading their testimonies in Irish Nurses in the NHS is like opening a time capsule into the lifestyles and attitudes of earlier generations who emigrated to Liverpool, Leeds, London, Glasgow and other British cities ... The book is important in the context of a wider, and long overdue, recognition of the contribution made by our Irish nurses to that iconic British institution, the NHS.” Martina Devlin, the Irish Independent.