Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Ní Sheaghdha. Advanced nurse practitioners in a community setting, particularly in the context of long-term chronic illness, have excellent outcomes and are important.

I will return to some of the discussions regarding consultant contracts, if I have enough time. One of the earlier speakers referred to the type B, public-only contracts. I was glad to hear that because I had gone looking for a mention of it in the submissions, but not found it. I thought that as a new Deputy I might have been missing something. In December 2019, the band for that contract was outlined by the then Minister and the then Taoiseach in the Dáil as being between €180,000 and €222,000, rising to €252,000. Specialists agreeing to take up a public-only contract will make that one of the highest rates in the OECD area.

This would not be a new contract insofar as Sláintecare included this kind of a contract idea in the 2017 report, and it was also mentioned in 2019 in the de Buitléir report. I was surprised, therefore, that it was not mentioned in the submissions. If we are looking at having one of the highest salary rates in the OECD for a public-only contract, and that is not acceptable to consultants, what does that mean for the future of Sláintecare?