Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. This year, unlike last year, every student nurse was or will be offered a job in the Irish health service. That has come after years of our nursing graduates having to go abroad because there were no jobs in this country. Measures are being taken now.

Nursing organisations and I would agree that there is a need to do more. In order to do more, we need to do things on an evidence basis and with an objective examination of the recruitment and retention challenges. That is why the Government decided yesterday to progress with phase 2 of the Public Sector Pay Commission which puts a particular emphasis on the recruitment and retention challenges in the health sector.

I refer to the opening of the new emergency department in Limerick.

Consider how we have recruited nurses to open and staff the new emergency department in Limerick. The picture is not all doom and gloom. More nurses are working in the health service this year than last year and there will be significantly more working by the end of the year. Ms Mannion will take the committee through how she sees that developing.

I will ask Mr. O'Brien to comment on the scoliosis matter and the signing of the contracts, but my understanding is that there is still a commitment to try to achieve the target of no one waiting for longer than four months. Yesterday's figures showed further progress in this regard. There will be 164 children, including the group to which Deputy O'Reilly referred, in need of procedures by the end of the year, which reaches the target of four months. The HSE has already identified capacity within the system for 131 and is trying to find more capacity for the remainder. The HSE-----