Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the submission from Ms Rogers and we have been getting lobbying emails. I am particularly interested in the mid-west as I am a Clare Deputy. I do not know if the emails are geography-specific. My take-home point from this is that the mid-west is particularly pressured when it comes to neurological services. I know there has been recruitment and we have gone from two to four neurological nurses but best practice suggests we should have 11 and, somewhere in the middle, there seems to be a settlement that eight are required.

When somebody enters undergraduate nursing training, what additional training is required to go from that into the whole realm of neurological nursing? Without having pay grades in front of us, I presume that as it is an add-on skill, people are paid better. I have an additional question with regard to neurological consultants, which we have not discussed much today. Usually, when somebody is in private consultancy, they have a team around them. Are nurses who are qualified in neurological nursing more attracted to working in the private sphere, where conditions might be better, and is that also a factor that is driving them out of our public hospital system? Is the mid-west specifically more pressurised than other areas?