David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When I read all the opening statements, I found common themes in all of them in respect of solutions. For me, it is really worthwhile when we have witnesses and organisations come before an Oireachtas committee and not only outline the problem but also give us their insight into the solutions. As Deputy Durkan said, we know we need more beds so we need more inpatient bed capacity. If we do not have enough beds, patients who have to be admitted to hospital cannot be admitted quickly enough because the recovery or inpatient beds are not available.

As a consequence, many of them end up on trolleys. We do not have enough community beds, as we know, which means that there are knock-on consequences in terms of step-down beds, care in the home and all of those issues. Those are the points made by Fórsa, which we all accept. We do not have enough GP capacity. The witnesses referenced that.

If people cannot get access to a GP in or out of hours, they have no choice but to go to an emergency department. It strikes me that huge numbers of people are going to emergency departments who should instead be treated in the community, but they are not being treated in the community because the capacity is not there which puts more of a burden on our emergency departments.

The key to fixing a lot of the problems is workforce planning and a workforce strategy. We need to train, recruit and retain more professionals. We cannot fix the problems in our healthcare system if we do not send out a very powerful message to people who are training that we want them to come and work in the public system, that we have listened to the issues they raised regarding retention, recruitment and the reasons people are not coming, and that we have fixed these problems. If we do not fix them, we will not hire staff in the numbers that we want and we will not be able to deliver on the healthcare the people need.

Can the witnesses address workforce planning and recruitment? Consultants are represented by the IMO. I ask Dr. Molloy to outline the difficulties they face and any other points he wants to make. I will put a quick point to SIPTU following his response.