Mr. Martin Varley:

I would like to comment further on the two interlinked questions asked by the Deputy. She asked if efforts were being made to recruit highly trained specialists to come back to take up posts in Ireland. An excellent Irish specialist trainee who spoke at our conference, Dr. Toby Gilbert, is now a consultant at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

He presented his views on that, and did so quite well. He has a stay or go decision to make in his life vis-à-vishis career. The stay means staying in Australia and the go means going home and being with his family and friends and back in the Irish health service. His conclusion was that for as long as there is pay inequality, he has no decision to make. It is already made for him. That is the problem. The difficulty we have is that for as long as successive Ministers for Health perpetuate the inequality that was introduced in 2012, it will continue to drive away our highly trained specialists who are embraced in other services and given all the resources they need to treat patients on time.

One third of the graduate classes, the intern classes, goes to Australia each year from all the colleges and locations. More than 200 interns are in the Perth hospitals. They go from there to other hospitals and they stay. They are very well looked after. It is not about being looked after but being valued. They are valued to the extent that there is no discrimination. They are also given the resources to treat patients on time. They are the two basic ingredients to get people back.