Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

It takes time and planning to get highly specialist consultants. The comments made about the efforts to train is the reality in paediatrics. We have found that when we plan ahead we can encourage clinicians to plan for and engage in their training so they are identifying the posts and clinicians for the future.

From a nursing perspective, we have only two vacancies in our theatres at the moment and that is a good position to be in. We need to recruit more nurses to expand our theatres but we are in a relatively good position.

I am happy to confirm that we have a fully staffed eight-bed ICU in Temple Street and 23 beds fully staffed in Crumlin for which we are funded. We have surge plans, if necessary, during an emergency and that is done an overtime basis.

Once we get approval to proceed, we will do an active recruitment campaign and our nursing leaders are quite strong on that. Nurses and anaesthetists, predominantly, are the other key staff that we need. My clinical colleagues are quite right that it takes longer to fill psychology and nurse specialists posts. We have demonstrated with the investment that we got in 2018 and 2019 that we can attract high calibre staff. We must now get the infrastructure that will allow staff to do the job that they came to do with us and treat children as speedily, and as timely, as possible.