Mr. Robert Watt:

To add to what Mr. Reid and his colleagues have said, there has been an increase of over 500 posts since 2019, which is a 16% increase. The narrative about the health system is always that nothing is happening but that is just not the case. There is an enormous increase in staffing levels and there is also an enormous increase in the number of doctors in training to create the pool of future consultants. The numbers here are quite staggering, with a 42% increase in the number of training places since 2012. Ms Hoey will correct me if I am wrong about that. Around 24%, or almost a quarter, of those are since 2017. They will be, in effect, the main pool of potential consultant posts in the future.

I do not wish to be disrespectful to any group or lobby group but I do not think the debate about the health system should be guided by what press statements are issued. If we had 20,000 consultants, the IHCA would say the same thing, that is, that we need more. I have been involved in issues around health for years, after working in the Department of Finance since 2008 and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform since 2011. It is the same narrative every year but it needs to be much more sophisticated than that. We need to talk about ways of work and work practice reforms. Dr. Colm Henry is not here today but he is leading on the clinical pathways, which Ms Goff touched on, and improved ways of working, the shift to the left and the embrace of technology. We spoke about this last time. Given demographic change, the demand in the health system is going up by 3% or 4%. That is a doubling of the demand in 18 or 20 years. No country, including this one, will be able to meet those demands by increase in workforce alone. I can imagine that whoever is in these chairs in ten years will be talking about a health system of more than 200,000 people, in reality. However, it cannot just be about that. It has to be about the reforms and the different ways of doing things.

The Deputy mentioned FEMPI and the outstanding issues with the consultant body. We have an independent chair, Tom Allen, and the negotiations are ongoing. We hope to conclude those talks very quickly, by the beginning of next month. That will hopefully draw a line under that and we can move on.