Ms Anne Marie Hoey:

We have only literally heard that the Minister has brought the proposal through the Government, which is very welcome. As the Secretary General said, I and other colleagues have been involved in this for quite a long time. It is a massive change in terms of consultant-delivered care in hospitals. The core hours in which consultant-delivered care will be available now increases to 80 hours. The focus very quickly changes to implementation. As I understand a date has yet to be set for implementation. The representative bodies are undertaking their own internal processes these days as well.

It is important to note that the number of consultant posts has been increasing significantly in recent years. We have a net increase of 560 additional consultant posts in the system since the beginning of 2020. We have also seen an increase year-on-year in terms of the number of development consultant posts that have been approved and we continue to recruit towards them. We hope the new contract will be very attractive to recruits coming to work in our system. I do not have to hand the number of new consultant posts in the service plan for next year but it is something we can get it for the Deputy.