Dr. Colm Henry:

Like many other European countries, we face significant challenges with medical recruitment. The European Commission has predicted that in the entire European Union, there will be a shortfall of 1 million healthcare staff by 2020. We are not alone in facing medical recruitment difficulties. One of the difficulties we face is that we have to recruit for unscheduled care in 29 sites. There can be no break in unscheduled care once we have announced we have unscheduled care, be it in obstetrics, paediatrics, medicine, surgery or anaesthetics, and there has to be staff ready to see and care for patients. That explains to some degree our dependency on agency and locums because such a service by definition is unbroken.

Deputy Durkan made a point earlier about the way people work. Sláintecare is a critical enabler. We are changing the way people work now. The deputy director general of operations and I attended a meeting earlier this week, a conference of health and social care professionals who demonstrated how innovative staff are. They are not just hard working but they brought in initiatives in Beaumont Hospital, in Kilkenny and in the community where they are working, outside their traditional boundaries and bringing Sláintecare into practice before it is being implemented. That is happening through the innovation of our staff on the ground.