Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

The national training body for doctors in the HSE has identified the workforce plan. We are committed to working on it. We accept that paediatrics requires additional training. We are working now to a standard in CHI that is comparable to the training they could get internationally. I see the training assessment reports that come in for CHI. We can offer to plan this but it needs to be planned. We started, let us say, five years ago on planning for some of what we knew was in the pipeline and are able to demonstrate that, for example, a huge number of people are applying for general paediatrics. It is the same in paediatric emergency medicine and paediatric anaesthesia. It takes that length of time. I support Professor McCormack concerning the need for strategic planning around these posts. There are not many of them so trainees need to identify the potential future.