Each year more than 85,000 students graduate from Irish third-level institutions.
While the vast majority are eager to immediately contribute their knowledge, skill and expertise to the workforce, despite their enthusiasm and eligibility, many find it difficult to find work in their chosen field.
Michael Brennan says many of his peers decided it would be “easier to find work, a place to live and a decent lifestyle” somewhere other than Ireland.
“I left college three years ago and have had nothing but difficulty trying to find a proper job,” he says. “I did a Bachelor’s in Commerce and thought that it would be a good degree, which would open doors for me. But I have found it really difficult to get my foot on any sort of ladder. Initially, I wasn’t too bothered as I had just finished and thought it would be good to spend some time doing a bit of travelling.
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“I went off to Europe for six months and then came back and decided to look for a proper job. At the time, I was living at home in Wicklow because I couldn’t find anywhere to rent in Galway, which is were I wanted to live. The constant rejection, or worse, the silence, after applying to jobs, was so demoralising. I was doing part-time jobs just to earn some money, and then my girlfriend, who has an arts degree, and I decided to just move (from Wicklow) in the hope that maybe it would be better to be onsite rather than trying to find housing and jobs from the other side of the country.
“That was six months ago – and now we are currently living in a double room in a shared house which costs €1,400 per month and are both doing casual work – she’s working in a hotel and I’m working in a bar. It is completely unsustainable as we have hardly anything left after we have paid the rent. So we have decided enough is enough and next month, we are moving to London.
“I got offered a job in a company there and my girlfriend is still waiting to hear back from some jobs she has applied to. We didn’t really want to move, but felt we had no choice as there was nothing available to us here.”
Aoife Hanrahan did get a job in her field straight out of college, but says it was nothing like what she was expecting and was “more suited to a secretarial role” than for someone with a science degree.
“I got a job in a pharmaceutical company when I graduated two years ago,” she says. “At first, I was delighted as I felt it was in keeping with what I had studied, but the job was not at all what I thought it would be. I understand that the newest person has to do the most mundane jobs, but really it was a joke. I spent most of my day going through spreadsheets and checking things off against other forms.
“I also seemed to be the office gofer, and my direct manager seemed to do everything in her power to give me the most demeaning and irrelevant jobs of all. I don’t know if it was just a personality clash or if this is standard practice in the sector, but I realised that if this was what it was going to be like for the foreseeable future, then there was no way I was sticking around.
“Also, the salary wasn’t enough to live a good quality of life, so after six months, I handed in my notice and decided to take some time out to figure out if I wanted to work in that field or even in Ireland at all. I have two friends who went to Australia straight from college, so I went over there for almost a year, doing bar work and stuff. Then, because I knew that I couldn’t stay there, and things didn’t seem to have improved much at home, I went travelling with a friend and we ended up in the Netherlands.
“I applied for a couple of positions here as most places speak English, so I am hopeful that I will get something soon. And in the meantime, I’m just enjoying life.”
Eoin O’Brien has also made the move abroad after gaining a first-class honours degree in psychology and finding it “impossible to get the experience needed” to progress with his career, despite successfully securing a position on the HSE panel for assistant psychology (AP) roles.
“I know that I have done very well academically, but I can’t get a job without experience and it is impossible to get experience without a job,” he says. “I went for an interview with the HSE and was told that I was successful and would be placed on the panel for AP positions. But that was last November [2024], and while a few jobs have come up, the people who are still on the panel from the year before get placed before anyone in my round, so it has been a year of waiting and it looks like it could be the same time again before something suitable comes up.
‘If they want Ireland to succeed into the future, there needs to be a concerted effort to encourage graduates to stay here’
— Eoin O’Brien, psychology graduate
“I stayed at home in the beginning thinking that there would be an opening soon enough, but while I was doing part-time work, it was really hard, as I wanted to get started on my career. I applied to other private AP jobs around Ireland initially, and then other lesser roles, even jobs like healthcare assistants, and I would either not hear back or be told that I was too qualified for the job. Week after week, I would get an email or a letter starting with ‘unfortunately’, and it was so depressing. So, in the end, I started applying to jobs in the UK.”
The Dublin man says he was “inundated with offers” from various companies around England and, eventually, settled on a position in Bristol, which he took up during the summer.
“I didn’t want to move as I love living in Ireland, but I had no choice,” he says. “I don’t understand how there aren’t any positions available, particularly within the HSE, as we are always hearing about the need for more psychologists and yet, there are probably hundreds of successful applicants on a list just waiting for a position to open up.
“Something needs to be done about this, as pretty much everyone I know is either thinking of moving abroad or has gone already. If they want Ireland to succeed into the future, there needs to be a concerted effort to encourage graduates to stay here.”
The issue, according to the HSE, is already being addressed and steps are being taken to get graduates, in the health sector at least, into jobs a soon as possible after graduating.
“The overall health workforce has increased by 24 per cent in the past five years,” says a spokesperson. “The Health and Social Care Professionals (HSCP) workforce has increased by 30.3 per cent from January 1st, 2020, to the end of June 2025, from 16,769 whole-time equivalent [WTE jobs] to 21,850 WTE, and our nursing workforce has grown by 24.8 per cent in the same time period. This increase is largely due to the significant initiatives to attract and retain graduates from Irish colleges, with these initiatives commencing in the final year of college.
“This includes direct targeting of HSCP final-year students through the colleges and supported by webinars to encourage and support the students to apply for high-profile national campaigns, which will give them access to a broad spectrum of opportunities to obtain their licence to practice.”
The spokesperson said that occasionally in previous years, “some graduates did experience some delays between graduation and CORU [Regulating Health & Social Care Professionals] registration”, but this is changing. “Over the last 18 months, the HSE has worked in close collaboration with the regulator to reduce the registration times from the student getting their results to being registered,” she says. “This is now circa 16 days from completing their registration application to being on the register. Once they have their professional registration, they have access to a broad spectrum of opportunities across the country and care settings.
“However, it should be noted that the funded vacancies are not always in the first choice of location or care setting for the graduate. The HSE, for the last number of years, has issued a directive to all services to offer permanent positions to graduates from Irish colleges.
“This initiative has been in place for Nursing and Midwifery graduates since 2021, and in 2023 commenced for HSCPs. Whilst this initiative will accommodate most graduates, the HSE encourages graduates and all healthcare professionals to register with the HSE Career Hub, which will provide weekly notifications on roles that meet their criteria in the HSE, but also across the voluntary services.”
