Dr. Niamh Humphries:

We need to come back to the individual doctors again. We do not have a shortage of doctors; we train plenty of doctors. We fail to retain them and offer them terms and conditions that are attractive to them. We are talking a great deal about poor working conditions, but it is not attractive to work in a situation where you have a very poor work-life balance. It is not attractive to hospital doctors to return from somewhere like Australia, where they have a very good work-life balance, to a situation in Ireland where they know they will struggle to get the resources they need to be the best that they can be and struggle to do their job as best as they can for themselves and their patients. It is just out of sync with what is on offer in other countries. Until we start to meet what Australia and other countries offer, we will continue to struggle to get people to apply for the posts that are vacant.