Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In terms of the measures that are in place, I listed several of them for Deputy Cullinane earlier but will provide a full list of the measures that are already in place. In terms of the private hospitals a €25 million bridging fund has been created and the HSE is using private hospital facilities right now, right across the system, based on medical priority. Tenders have issued from now until Christmas and potentially beyond to all private hospitals. We are tendering for diagnostics, services and surge capacity and I have no doubt that the example the Deputy gives of tendering for facilities but not necessarily for consultants is incorporated into the thinking on that. I want to make sure that we avoid the situation we were in earlier this year, although I fully understand why it was done at the time, in the heat of moment in a full-blown crisis. I am not criticising the action taken but it is clear that it did not work in terms of ongoing support, although it did work in terms of creating surge capacity very quickly. I want to make sure we avoid the block purchase of resources that happened the last time.

In terms of consultants, a lot of progress has been made but let us remember that we have over 500 consultant vacancies right now. We have one of the lowest levels of consultants per head of population in the OECD and if we are to get to a decent level, we will have to do an awful lot more than just fill the vacant posts. C contracts have been signed off recently, which had not been done for quite some time. I hope to have news to share with the committee soon on public health doctors and transitioning them to where they should be and where they deserve to be, namely, as consultant-grade doctors. The Sláintecare contract is a priority for this term for the Government and we are also looking at the new entrant pay inequality issues that have been discussed in the Dáil for some time.

The Deputy will be aware that with the permission of the Dáil the nursing home support scheme was extended. That move had the support of Nursing Homes Ireland, NHI. We will provide a full briefing to the Deputy on that. The nursing homes expert group report was launched recently. That report was very comprehensive and contained 86 recommendations across 15 themes. The implementation team has been set up and we have continuity advising that team from people who were involved in the expert group. We will be putting a package of recommendations together which I will bring to the Oireachtas for debate.