Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

As I said at the outset, we have an agreement in place which requires the HSE to agree a funded workforce plan with us each November. That has not happened since 2017. There have been public announcements that there will be recruitment of more than 6,000 staff into the health service but we have no details. In the last engagement we had with the HSE, we were told the Minister has not yet signed off on the service plan for it for 2021, and today is 9 February. A service plan for this year has not been signed of at Department level yet so it is difficult to get engagement when that is the case. This is hugely problematic because-----