Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government made it very clear this week that the resources to fund that Labour Court decision, which was not a Government deal but a decision by an independent part of our industrial relations mechanism, which I presume the Deputy's party supports as well as the Government, will have to be found within the existing budgets. The INMO is a member of ICTU. ICTU is in a process of engaging with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on behalf of the Government. The INMO members voted to be part of the Lansdowne Road agreement and this week the INMO reaffirmed its commitment to that agreement. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has made it clear that there are significant challenges as a result of the independent decision of the Labour Court in terms of how that impacts on other unions within the Lansdowne Road agreement, but these must be addressed collectively.

The Deputy asked me what I will do about recruitment and retention, which is a valid question. The budget refers to 1,000 additional nurses. We are actively advertising to recruit nurses. One of the problems in recruitment and retention, as we all know from our lives and from talking to people, is that so many of our nurses and nursing graduates left the country because they were not being offered jobs, or they were being offered jobs for two or three months while the UK was offering them full, permanent contracts. That is the second piece. Every nursing graduate this year has been offered a permanent contract in the Irish health service. There has been an improvement in graduate pay from 2011 to 2015, although a number of that cohort went abroad. We now must bring them back and this is a further tool in the basket to do that. Their pay will be restored somewhat from January. We are recruiting for another 1,000 positions and we are now offering people permanent contracts. The Deputy is quite correct that it is not all about pay. It is also about the conditions in which people are working. We are investing in the health service again. Instead of cutting health budgets, we are expanding them. We are putting more resources into trying to make our health service function in a better way.

It is important not to have this conversation in a vacuum. While nursing numbers are still down on their peak, and I am certainly not suggesting that they are back to where they must be, the numbers have increased from September 2015 to September 2016 by 1,391. There are 1,391 more nurses working in the system this year than there were in September last year, so the numbers are moving in the right direction. There is significantly more work to do and I look forward to engaging with that.

On the issue of Connolly Hospital, I share the Deputy's view, from talking to parents, that people who express concerns are doing so in a legitimate manner, and they are legitimate and sincere concerns. I was simply making the point that in the dialogue and discourse it would be useful if people understood that the motives of the people trying to develop the national children's hospital are also good.

They too want to see improvements in paediatric services. All of the various options for acute hospital sites were considered by the Government of the day in the decision it made in 2012. Obviously, I was not in this role at that time. It is important to look at the multi-specialties available in St. James's that, quite frankly, are not available elsewhere.

I think the Deputy made a very reasonable point about the Coombe. St. James's is about the tri-location of the paediatric hospital, an adult acute hospital with a level of specialties that others do not have, which is vital for our children, and maternity services. The Deputy knows that there are plans to move the Coombe. The Deputy will ask me where it is at and will ask me to show a bit of movement on that-----