The HSE's proposed recruitment drive for the nursing sector will drive more graduates abroad.

Under the plans, one thousand graduates will be hired by the HSE, but paid 80 percent of the going salary, as a moratorium on hiring in the sector is lifted.

Nursing unions are holding a protest today at Croke Park in Dublin, in opposition to the plan, which they say will put a thousand agency staff out of work and is unfair to graduates who will be underpaid.

General Secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Liam Doran, says the 80 per cent salary on offer cannot compete with those available to nurses abroad: