Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Sláintecare Implementation: Discussion (Resumed)
Mr. Robert Watt:
There is formal engagement led by Ms Kenna. The Ministers have met and there is a realisation that we needed to be better integrated. I absolutely accept a lot of the points that the Deputies have made this morning about the higher education sector responding ultimately to healthcare needs, and for us to be very clear that these are the growing needs and we need to train more of our young people. In essence that is it. To be frank, this morning I said that we negotiated an increase in the number of places by 200, from 720 up to almost 900. Mr. Reid mentioned earlier the population and the greater frailty of older people. All of the Deputies this morning spoke about individual cases in their constituencies. We understand that and everybody has alluded to it. The reality is that we are going to have to train more doctors. There is no way of getting around this. We must have a step change. What we have tried to do over the past year in terms of getting-----
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