Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, Deputy O'Reilly highlights this issue on a regular basis. Yes, through the PA Consulting capacity review report there is an indication of the additional staff we need in primary care. The director of the Sláintecare office, Laura Magahy, is currently working with the HSE to turn that into a workforce plan. Ms Magahy will be before the committee on 23 October. To be honest with Deputy O'Reilly, the short answer is that we need some 4,000 extra people working in primary care. Through the Sláintecare office, I intend to map out how we get from here to there. Despite the very difficult constraints under which we are operating in the context of a no-deal Brexit budget, I expect to begin to make progress on that in 2020, as well as to map out how we can build on that in each of the following years. Ms Magahy has done a considerable amount of work on this. The end point is that we need some 4,000 more people if we are to make sure that our primary care centres and our primary care teams are operating at full capacity. The decisions on how that staff is divided out is the responsibility of-----