Professor Damian McCormack:

An issue is that for junior doctors to train in paediatric orthopaedics, they have to train in adult orthopaedics first, which is a five-year programme. A very small number of them then go on and do what is, in my opinion, the most difficult sub-speciality within orthopaedics, namely, paediatric orthopaedic surgery. It is a difficult and technical area, so the majority of doctors do not wish to go into it. The solution to that issue is to separate from the adult training programme and train a small number of elite surgeons who will do this work around the country and support each other as a small elite group. We do not have that in Ireland, and it is telling.