Ms Magdalen Rogers:

I wish to respond briefly. The Senator spoke about the waiting lists for neurology and the impact of the pandemic and asked what the reasons were for them being so high. The Neurological Alliance of Ireland, in collaboration with the neurology clinical programme, carried out a national audit of neurology resourcing around the country in late 2020. We waited until late 2020 in order that it would not be impacted by the redeployment of staff. We were reassured that all staff were back in their normal posts by then. We compared that with a similar audit we had done in 2015. We found, very worryingly, that levels of staffing across neurology services had remained relatively static in those five years and had even decreased in some areas, particularly with regard to allied health professionals and the proportion of whole-time equivalents that were available to the neurology services.

Neurology staffing, as Professor Hardiman explained, has not kept pace with demand and especially in respect of nurse specialists. Even where there are nurse specialists in place around the country the case loads for those nurses are far in excess of what they should be. The recommended case load of patients for a multiple sclerosis nurse is 316 patients. We found that this is far exceeded, especially in the regional centres, so even if a nurse is in place and it appears on paper that there is a nurse providing a service, often those case loads are unmanageable and an additional post needs to be put in place there.