Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy is aware, the HSE has revised its view as to what is achievable this year, and its view is approximately 5,500 whole-time equivalents. However, I would make two points. First, on the 10,000 figure, I am very comfortable setting stretch targets that move the HSE and the Department beyond what they are comfortable trying to achieve. Second, the fact there is now a gap between what they believe is possible and what is funded does leave us opportunities to look at new things. I appreciate we are out of time but I want to make the following point. I was in Limerick last week and one of the things that was very clear to me was that there is an urgent need for more emergency specialists, for example. That hospital has eight and the point was made to me by one of them that the equivalent hospital in Australia would have in excess of 20. The fact we may have some headroom for this year means, and I would be very interested in the committee's view on this through the year, that we can all take this as an opportunity to ask whether there are other areas where we clearly need more clinical workforce that we could move on and sanction.