Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. I was jumping between two meetings, so my apologies if any of my questions have been asked. The committee has previously discussed consultants, hiring, staffing and so on. The witnesses mentioned that there are just three genetic consultants in CHI, for example, but that there is a need for 15 of them. Is there capacity within the service to achieve that? My understanding is that consultants need years of training and so on. What needs to be done to get to that stage? Are consultant posts coming down the line? Is there any movement on trying to get people trained up to fill those posts? Consultants do not appear overnight; it takes them years of training. How far away are we from getting to the 15 genetic consultants we need? Has there been any move by the Government to put funding into training posts or anything like that or are we still years away because there just has not been investment in that area?