Mr. Anthony Owens:

Could I come in? I thank the Senator for his questions. He asked about vacant consultant posts in certain sites. I would overlay that because we have many vacant consultant posts in certain specialties. Right now, we need emergency medicine consultants and ICU consultants where we have many vacant posts. We also need mental health consultants, psychiatrists, and they will be particularly needed when, touch wood, we get out of this. We also have many vacant posts there. Therefore, it is sites and specialties.

The Senator also mentioned the vaccine roll-out. Many of our non-consultant hospital doctors came to us with a particular issue. As he knows, non-consultant hospital doctors have a rotational pattern and quite a few will rotate from one location to another in January every year. This year we had a particular problem. Many of them who were leaving site A to go to site B were told in site A to hang on and get the vaccine in site B and others were told when they got to site B to go back to site A to get their second dose. There are issues which affect numbers of doctors. In the great scheme of things, it might seem relatively small but the fact of the matter is a vaccination campaign, which is our way out of this, should not make our doctors anxious and should not give them concerns or pause for thought. It should not give us reasons to approach the HSE and ask, "Would you please vaccinate front-line healthcare workers?" That should just be happening.