Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, unless we tackle these issues head on and deal with them, we will be talking about the same issues in five and ten years. It is all very well to talk about austerity, which was mentioned a couple of times, but we never had austerity in this country. We had the IMF running the country when the money supply was cut off. It was unfairly cut off to a lot of people who were very deserving, including in education and in health. It was cut off and we had no control over it. We are now in a position where we are trying to rebuild the system again. We do not have the IMF and we must follow certain standards. We have to rebuild the system from the point of view of our constituents and the growing demands of an increased population.

How quickly can we gain access to a greater supply of GPs if we have to take them from abroad? What can we do about that? There is a very lethargic method of dealing with applications from nurses, for example, who want jobs and who want to join here. Nurses may have qualified in the UK but when they make an application to join the hospital services here, they could be waiting six months before the response, or more. They keep complaining to us that they make the application and then the response is slow. We must get out of that situation in a hurry.