Ms Anne Marie Hoey:

In addition to the comments Dr. Henry has made, similar to the GPs, the number of nurses in training has increased in recent years and again this year. In the last couple of years, there has been an increase of over 360 additional trainees coming into the nursing undergraduate programmes. We have also recruited significantly from the international market this year so by the end of this year we anticipate we will have recruited approximately 1,900 additional international nurses. The Deputy is right that we need to use the potential for skill mix to its maximum effect. As Dr. Henry has said, we have also increased the pathways for training for the more specialist nursing posts in our own system as well.

On the point about emigration, it is not unsurprising that will happen this year because there were a couple of years where people could not travel. What we need to do is to put all our efforts into keeping in touch with the people who do emigrate so that we can try to attract them back in a year or two.