Ms Rosarii Mannion:

I agree that workforce planning is an area on which we need to work collectively with colleagues in the Department of Health. It is covered in the response from the Chairman - question 33 - around the cross-sectoral steering group that colleagues in the Department of Health have been working with us on. We are really pleased with this and within health, through leadership, we are setting up a strategic integrated workforce planning group. This will have representation from national doctors training and planning, nursing, health and social care professionals, support grades and management and administration. That has been established within the HR division. Our inaugural steering group meeting, which will be co-chaired by my colleague, Mr. John Hennessy, will take place next week on 17 November. That might give the committee some level of assurance.

Since January of this year, we have been looking specifically at the issues around consultant workforce planning, including what we might do differently and how we can improve. We have an excellent report - I agree that we are very good at reporting - but the strength of this would be simply in its implementation. The group behind the report was chaired by Professor Frank Keane. It was signed off on on 8 November, having been through our leadership, and the official launch is on 2 December. It will be supported by a national employment record which, referring to the previous Deputy's point, will give us all that data at a touch of a button by the first quarter of 2017. I have that report with me. It is entitled Towards Successful Consultant Recruitment, Appointment and Retention. We have the appendices. The e-module is established. If it is appropriate or if it would be deemed suitable, we can provide demonstrations to any Deputy in terms of how we are collating the data and how it will operate. They will be able to view the whole system.

We are also taking online feeds through the Irish Medical Council twice a day in order to ensure that we close off any issues in terms of data collection. As I stated, we are happy to give demonstrations. Further, I have the report with me and it can be given to the clerk to the committee if that is deemed appropriate.