David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I come back to the issue of emergency medicine consultants. Mr. Mulvany said earlier when I put questions to him on that issue that the 51 consultants was never designed to be for this year. That is not what it states in the plan. On page 17 of the plan for winter 2022-2023 it states that analysis by site has been completed and the number of additional emergency department consultants required to enhance the delivery of safe and timely care to patients in emergency departments is 51 whole-time equivalents. That tells me that an analysis was done and here is what we need to ensure that patients have access to a safe and timely service. It goes on to state that due to recruitment limitations, these posts will be filled initially with locum consultants - I think the figure of 21 was given earlier. Mr. Mulvany said that the remaining, or certainly a portion of those, will not be delivered for this winter. It goes on to state that an additional 20 whole-time equivalent registrars will also be required to support the emergency department consultant posts. It is reasonable for us to put it to Mr. Mulvany that we have a winter plan again where figures are put into it to suggest we will have all of this additional capacity when, in fact, it is a multi-annual plan. If it is a multi-annual plan, state that it is. However, it does not state that in the plan.

What concerns me more is that if an analysis has been done by site, which I assume is each emergency department, that states that we need an additional 51 emergency consultants but that we are not going to have 51 additional consultants, then we are not equipped to deal with what is happening in the emergency departments this year given Mr. Mulvany's admission that about half of those consultant posts will not be filled or in place this year.