Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Mr. O'Brien for their presentations. I will touch on the Portlaoise report briefly. There are 19 maternity units around the country. Is information available on the perinatal mortality rate for all 19 units?

It is important to reassure people. There are 19 units and there are people working who are concerned and it is important that the information is put out there. The second issue raised in the Portlaoise report was that the State Claims Agency was aware of concerns at Portlaoise hospital, but there seems to have been no mechanism between the agency and the Department to ensure there was a response to those growing concerns. Is there now a mechanism in place should a situation arise in another hospital facing a large number of claims? What are we doing where one agency knows there is a problem, but another is not reacting? Is there a mechanism to allow the former to go directly to the Department?

The second issue I raise relates to the Cork-Kerry area. I have been made aware in the last few days that there was an agreement that 30 vacancies in relation to public health nurses and community nurses would be filled. I have also been made aware in the last two days that this has been put back and long-fingered. Can that be clarified? It may not be possible to do so today, but I ask it be done. We need these people out there in the community. They do very good work, but there are more than 30 vacancies in the Cork-Kerry region which have been open for some time notwithstanding the agreement that they be filled.

The third issue is the response to my fifth question, which was on junior doctors. I have been raising this issue for four years, but we have not made a huge amount of progress. The response to my question states that there are 2,943 doctors on structured training programmes. While they may be on structured training programmes, they are not on contracts as such. A number of junior doctors are still moving around on training programmes and six month contracts and are on emergency tax every six months. We seem to have made no progress in the last four years in real terms. I also raise the issue concerning junior doctors in Cork University Hospital of the absence of Internet access in the doctors' residence. The library access is insufficient for them. They are studying and training and providing a service, but we cannot provide a simple service to them notwithstanding that we want them to stay in the country. We are not making a great deal of progress. We need these people. We need good people to stay here but we are not putting the incentives in place. We have now had two reports from MacCraith and another lot of reports is being put on a shelf to be dealt with at some stage in the future. We are not making enough progress. Now is the time to start dealing with this issue so that when someone is on a five-year programme, he or she has a contract and does not go onto emergency tax. It should not be a case of six-month contracts. It is something with which we need to deal if we want to make serious progress on the retention of very good people in the State.