Dr. Tony O'Connell:

A table entitled "Full-time consultant vacancies" was not included in the papers of Senator Burke, and I apologise for this. I will pass on this table, which lists consultant vacancies by hospital. I will mention only the four largest numbers, because they are worrying figures. Waterford hospital has 23 consultant vacancies, the Mater has 14, the Louth-Meath group of hospitals has 21 and the West/North West Hospitals Group has 30. The Senator has correctly identified that, historically, the centralised collection of data on vacancies has been poor. I generated this list by phoning the hospitals individually.

As Ms McGuinness stated, we need to measure this much more accurately on a central basis. We will need to give the Senator a specialty-by-specialty breakdown in a separate table.