Dr. Colm Henry:

To refer back to comments made by the Deputy's colleagues, it is not just a feature of the intern year. Intern year is a particular year, that occurs immediately after qualification, during which junior doctors work until they get full registration thus enabling them to progress to training schemes. The reason people may leave after their intern year may be precisely for that reason, the need to access training schemes. Consequently, expanding the number of interns without planning for an expansion in the number of training schemes has the effect of kicking the problem down the road. Part of manpower training, which I assure the Deputy is very actively taking place, is reducing our dependency on non-training doctors by converting those posts into training posts. As part of our response, in July 2021 we created 106 additional places and many of them from existing non-training posts. The reasons people may leave is to get training posts in other jurisdictions. Our challenge is to reduce our reliance on non-training posts, which are not good for assistance and certainly not good for the doctors concerned.