Ms Mary Walshe:

Our first port of call from a nursing perspective to ensure safety and stability in a team is overtime. We have to monitor that because we also have the European working time directives regarding hours of work. We also have to ensure that staff health and well-being is looked after. We appreciate it when experienced staff put themselves forward for overtime. Due to the cost of living in Dublin, staff living within the Dublin circle tend to do some shifts on overtime.

From that perspective, we really welcome that and the team appreciates that. It is important that we look after staff health and well-being. We had a staff health and well-being week in November. It was very well attended by staff. They really appreciated the fact that we acknowledged it. Mindfulness courses that were offered were booked out. We appreciate that it is really important.

In respect of nursing in particular, we have produced the numbers relating to increasing the student numbers. Someone working in London has a London weighting. We do not have that in Dublin, which would acknowledge the increased cost of living in Dublin, such as housing. This may need to be looked at not just for nursing and the health service but the public sector in general. It is something that may be helpful to retain people in Dublin because people are moving outside it to buy housing. Even though our colleagues in the other areas are picking up very experienced staff, the fact is that there is still not enough for even down the country. It is a problem in Dublin. Someone working in London has a London weighting, which may be something that needs to be looked with regard to retaining experienced and skilled professionals within the public service. We have looked at recruitment abroad to ensure that nurses meet the register requirements from a mental health point of view. They are not there in mental health nursing in comparison so they will not be eligible to register on the nursing register. That is an issue whereas our acute hospitals and other areas have been able to recruit from India, the Philippines and so on. That is all being reviewed and looked at as well.

We have put additional funding into ongoing education and training because that does retain staff. People do want to do higher diplomas and masters. A number of nurses in our area are doing PhDs and we have encouraged and supported that. Again, it is about retaining skilled people and valuing them within our service. We have had Christmas campaigns at the airport in our area because it is very close to us. We have done all the local recruitment. We have done what we can to retain it. As Mr. Walsh has said, we got more than 111 development posts over recent years but it only resulted in 83 whole-time equivalent additional on the census in 2017, so it is an ongoing piece. We have lost quite a lot of senior nurses from the system because they could retire at 55. That has been closed off but we have lost quite experienced nurses from the system because they were able to retire at 55. That has just changed but we have certainly lost quite a lot of people over recent years. I might defer to Ms Walsh with regard to the queries on the teams.