Mr. Anthony Owens:

We know what is coming down the track. It has been coming down the track for a number of years. It is just picking up speed. When I started in the IMO there might have been 100,000 people on waiting lists and we now have well over 800,000 people. We need to get serious about tackling this. We need to get the 720 or 730 vacant posts filled properly. We need to take advantage of the fact that at present we have the biggest intern cohort we have ever had. We need to keep these doctors here. We need to get them working on the patients they should be working on. We should also be paying our student nurses, by the way. We need to take advantage of the circumstances. They are not great but what we have we should take advantage of. There is goodwill towards the health service. We have more doctors than we have had previously because they cannot leave the country. Let us look to get them in and then we can begin addressing these huge waiting lists.