Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Moving on to recruitment, there has been a great deal of talk that the urgent care facility at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown will operate for significantly fewer hours than we thought. I understand part of the reason for this is that there must be six whole-time equivalent urgent care paediatric consultants and t hat, between the jigs and the reels and the fact that we are dealing with a recruitment and retention crisis, it is only 1.5 or two. We know that available doctors are like hens' teeth both here and around the world, one of the main issues in this country being the pay disparity for new entrants. In Ms Hardiman's experience of trying to hire doctors - we wish her the very best of luck and want to help with it - can she identify one or two changes that could be made, as well as getting rid of the pay disparity, to help us to retain the doctors we have, move from locums to permanent staff, which is what is needed in order to have a sustainable model, and make it easier to attract some of our paediatric consultants who are working around the world to come back and work here?