Private recruitment firms have received a 40% share of a £1.8 million NHS campaign budget to attract overseas nurses to Northern Ireland to plug the sector’s worst ever staffing shortage, reports Irish News.  Specialist healthcare recruiter TTM Healthcare and HCL Workforce Solutions, a provider of temporary and permanent health and social care professionals were both paid £750,000. This compares to £677,000 spent for training the new nurses. The British Home Office received the remaining £420,000 for "certificates of sponsorship.” To date, a total of £1.8 million has been spent on the campaign during a record nursing shortage, with more than 2,000 jobs now lying empty. The Department of Health said it is "working closely with the (recruitment) agencies to increase the pace of recruitment".  So far, the campaign has yielded 133 new recruits across the north's hospitals and community sector since the international drive was launched by the Department of Health in 2016, however concerns have been raised about the program’s slow pace and soaring bill and if it will meet its goal of recruiting more than 600 nurses by early 2020.  A Department spokeswoman said a total of 187 EU and non-EU recruits had arrived in Northern Ireland by the middle of last month, however, only 133 of them can work legally because they have registered with the regulator in London.