Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are particular staffing issues in the health service. We would be ignoring the elephant in the room if we did not mention them. I do not think one can make a direct comparison. The Public Service Pay Commission specifically focused on issues relating to the health service in view of the challenges and difficulties around recruitment and retention, a nice way of saying that the health service is understaffed. It is not fair to the men and women working in the health service to draw a direct line comparison with people working in other sectors of the public service. That comparison does not exist on a like-for-like basis. Before one would talk about PMDS, one would have to address the issue of the chronic understaffing which is evident in the mental health services and right across the health service. It would make any issue relating to PMDS exceptionally challenging. This is not because individuals do not want to engage with it. From my experience, which is fairly extensive, healthcare workers actively want to engage in PMDS but there are issues with time and so forth. It was stated community makes up less than 27% of the staff in the mental health service. One hears about the postcode lottery. Does that leave areas where cover is just not there?