Hospitals are losing nearly 20 nurses every week in what is being dubbed the worst crisis to hit frontline health services in living memory.

By the end of this year, it is expected up to 2,000 nurses will have haemorrhaged from the system since the beginning of 2008 with a blanket ban on recruitment making it impossible to fill the void.

A further 1,600 newly qualified nurses are graduating this summer but will find employment opportunities virtually impossible in Ireland and will be forced to leave the country.

The situation could get a lot worse – there are an estimated 650 pending applications for the early retirement scheme and potentially more for incentivised career breaks.

Commenting on the crisis, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) general secretary Liam Doran told the Sunday Tribune: "We are facing the biggest challenge in the public-health service for as long as anyone can remember. There is no protection whatsoever being afforded to frontline staff contrary to the utterances that are routinely put out."

The INO believes the massive drop-off in numbers, caused by a ban on recruitment and the non-renewal of contracts, will take a drastic toll on patients.

While the Health Service Executive (HSE) says nurses are not exempt from the moratorium on employing public-sector staff, it has highlighted a 40% recruitment increase over the last decade. But critics say the Department of Finance-led cutbacks on the health service will lead to a reduction in staffing the equivalent of three Beaumont Hospitals by 2010.

"I want to make it clear we have many differences with the HSE but the Department of Finance is in supreme charge and I think they have taken this decision," said Doran. The Department of Finance declined to comment.

Doran believes Ireland may one day have to look abroad again in order to fill the gaps in nursing, with homegrown staff simply vanishing abroad.

"As I speak, about 1,600 newly graduated nurses are coming out of courses and there are no jobs," he said.

"We are losing about 800 a year through retirement alone and that figure will increase."

A report delivered to HSE management last April by an independent staffing review identified 52 facilities, primarily catering for elderly residents, which are in chronic need of additional staff but which won't get them.

Some residents are being put to bed at four and five in the morning because the centres simply don't have the evening staff to cope, it has been claimed. The HSE said the findings of the report are currently under consideration.

The planned administration of a swine flu vaccine later this year is also causing serious concerns in the context of staffing levels.

"How are you going to deliver the vaccination programme and at the same time maintain the same level of service in the acute hospitals because of the increase in admissions? The acute hospital sector will be under extreme strain," said Doran.