Dr. Mike O'Connor:

We need to acknowledge first and foremost the extraordinary effort of our healthcare colleagues, in particular nurses, who have been at the front line, particularly over the last few years of Covid-19. If one looks at the whole-time equivalent, WTE, in the health service, it is 135,000 WTEs. The biggest growth has been in nursing. Everything should happen now, but from a recruitment point of view, things need to come in at a pace so far as we can recruit. From the clinical perspective, the situation that Deputy Burke described would not be the norm.