Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There cannot be trust. It is front-line staff more than management who should be beatified.

Dr. Harty mentioned pilot schemes. That is an idea. We could target areas where adolescent suicide rates are high, etc.

On worldwide recruitment, ten years ago the HSE knew that there was going to be a problem in recruitment, but it could not plan for it. Again, it is bad planning.

We probably have one of the best education services in the country. Why can we not plan for it and give incremental contracts where there can be improvement? We have lost the plot. In the next four years we are facing a decrease in the number of staff within the mental health service, possibly of 1,700 because of retirements. There is already a shortage of 500 staff, even on top of the additional 500 being sought. The HSE cannot plan for this reduction because it is going to wait until each individual retires. The process of recruitment takes 12 months. As most of the questions have been asked, I am flagging this issue and appealing to the Minister to do something about it.

Surely the Minister and the Minister of State have the power to bring in senior management in the HSE to ask what is the five year plan for recruitment and retention within all services, as well as the five year plan for budgetary spending, and then come up with some common-sense approaches? We were made aware that around €50 million was spend on taxis by the HSE last year. That is why I am appealing to the Minister and the Minister of State. They are being misinformed, as we are when it comes to replies to parliamentary questions. As I have said this to the Minister on one specific occasion, he knows that we are being misinformed. If he and the Minister of State are being misinformed, they cannot do their job and if we are being misinformed, we cannot assist them to do the job for everybody else in the country.