Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his presentation. He is very much focused on recruiting more staff. The figures I have show that in December 2014 there were 103,000 whole-time equivalent staff working in the HSE. In October 2021, this figure stood at 131,000. The biggest complaint I am hearing from consultants is that they cannot get access to theatre time. A number of consultants have told me that whereas before they had access to theatre for a full day each week, they are getting one half-day each week. One consultant, for example, tries to get three operations done in the one afternoon session in theatre provided each week. The consultant in question would normally list three people for operations but is finding that if the patient is not in theatre by 4 p.m., the operation must be cancelled and the consultant ends up doing two of the three scheduled operations in that week.

It is great to talk about recruiting staff but many of these highly specialised consultants who have trained in Ireland may have worked in the UK, the United States or Canada where they had access to theatre for at least one full day per week. In some places, they had two days of theatre time each week. When they come back to Ireland they find they are lucky to get one half-day a week. I heard of one case recently where a consultant was in theatre with a full complement of staff, there were empty beds in the ward on which they normally work, yet the consultant was advised that they could not do any elective surgery on that particular day. What is being done in hospitals to deal with the issue whereby facilities are available but someone, for some reason, is taking the decision at administrative level about what can and cannot be done?