Dr. John-Paul Byrne:

From our experience, pay was not a major issue for the participants we spoke to. It was not a reason for going or for coming back. It was not something they were majorly focused on when they discussed the Sláintecare contract. One of the issues we need to talk about is that, when doctors emigrate, we often hear that they will probably come back in a year but we are not sure whether they do. However, in going abroad, they are often going to systems that have better work-life balance and better conditions where they can spend their time being a doctor and getting satisfaction from that. Medicine is a competitive sector. The labour market is competitive. All of these countries are looking for highly specialised doctors in different specialties. Doctors experiencing these better systems, better experiences and better work-life balance is a risk to our health system because they will obviously make comparisons. We have written about this. They compare the working conditions and work-life balance in Australia and Ireland and, for the majority, Australia comes out on top. Australia obviously has its own issues but, with regard to doctors' own working life, participants had a better experience over there. As Dr. Humphries has said, a lot of the time it is the personal family pull back to Ireland that brings them back but we have to be concerned about how long that can continue to happen.