Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank all our guests. I will concentrate on the issue of public health. Probably before last March, very few people knew there was such a thing as public health. From the point of view of prioritisation and resourcing in the health service, public health was exceptionally under-resourced. If we have learned anything from the past seven or eight months, it must be that we must concentrate on public health, resource it properly and expand the capacity, because as it stands, it is very inadequate. Regarding the point about which we were talking earlier with regard to the collapse of the tracing system, that is a result of inadequate resourcing of public health.

I have a question for Ms Ní Sheaghdha about those public health leaders at community level - public health nurses.

Public health nurses are often a very undervalued group of healthcare workers. They are the people who have the expertise in child health, care of older people, vaccination programmes, chronic illness management in the community and so on. Traditionally, it has been very underresourced. There have been a lot of vacancies. How adequate is the capacity of public health nursing now?

I have a similar question relating to doctors for Ms Clyne. She said that not only is the provision of public health specialists wholly inadequate relative to other countries but also that public health specialists, unlike their peers, do not have the opportunity to be consultants as there is no such grade in this country. The Government indicated that it would address both of those points. What is the status of that? Ms Clyne said that 180 consultants were needed. What is happening about creating the consultant posts and expanding them to the level required?

I have a question for Professor Irvine if there is time. I would not disagree that serious mistakes were made in cutting consultant pay by 30%. It was a real slap in the face to new recruits and has done much damage. If he has time, will he tell us the other factors that discourage people from staying to practise in this country such as culture, career prospects and working conditions, which various surveys have told us discourage people from staying here after training? What action, if any, is being taken on those issues, which I think are probably equally important as pay, which is undoubtedly a major factor?