Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 July 2015
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children
Delays in the Registration of Nurses and Midwives: Discussion
9:30 am
Dr. Maura Pidgeon:
Yes, I just wanted to deal with the question about the staff. The staff that we are replacing are temporary staff on a short-term contract for a period of six months. The reasons for that are, first, that we have to finalise the funding of the organisation - creating permanent positions in the absence of firm funding arrangements into the future would not be very prudent. The second reason for the short-term contracts is that we wish to address the current crisis in terms of the backlog and fixing and enhancing our processes. On that basis, we will evaluate the progress being made because with enhanced systems and with more online capacity as we get towards the end of the year, there may not be the need for the same numbers of staff. It will be evaluated over that period of time.
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