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

Can I go back to the issue of employment of junior doctors who are on six-month or 12-month contracts? Could we work towards a system? I remember doing a lot of work on this in 2012 or 2013, when I did a report on it. Could we go back to a situation whereby instead of being given a 12-month contract or a six-month contract, a doctor is given a three-year contract, for example, and is able to rotate between hospitals? I know that is part of the training scheme, but if a doctor is not on the training scheme, he or she cannot get such a contract. What can we do to make sure people can plan ahead?

Another issue that is arising for junior doctors involves getting accommodation when they are moving from one place to another. That was not an issue five or six years ago, but it is now a huge problem. A doctor who is working in Cork today might be required to go to Dublin next year and to Galway after that. They can have problems trying to get accommodation and trying to work around that. Is there now a need to have many more junior doctors on two-year, three-year and four-year contracts, even if they are not on a training scheme?