Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to pick up on the question asked by Deputy O'Connell about ratios in terms of staff. Will Dr. Kinsella indicate whether there are objective best-practice ratios, issued by the World Health Organization or the OECD, with groups of countries comparable to Ireland, at least with regard to the number of cardiologists or speech therapists, for example? Should that be our starting point, if those objective ratios are set and adjusting for profile of population and so on?

Dr. Kinsella made reference to elements of good practice in respect of workforce planning for nurses, midwives and other categories of worker, but is he saying, fundamentally, that there is no overall workforce planning of consequence going on in Ireland? Are there no agencies or bodies taking responsibility in the round for health workforce planning? This is what I took from his comments.

Another question to which we would want to apply our minds very soon is the allocation of resources and what we know to be very wide variations in staff ratios on a geographic basis. Has Dr. Kinsella looked at that issue and, if he has, what are his findings on those variations?