Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the issue of 2014, a detailed list of all the posts in all the hospitals was given. It would have been easy to use that as a template to update the list every six months, but that does not seem to have been done.

We know that employees automatically retire at 64, 65 and 66. We can take it that 125 to 150 medical consultants retire every year so each unit should be able to identify who will retire in the next 12 to 18 months. We should be planning ahead for that but instead we are waiting until the vacancy arises and then advertising it. As a result, it is taking 12 months to three years to fill posts, which is not the way to do proper planning.