Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely, and we all have better patient services and patient healthcare in mind and that is the objective for us all. The difficulty is that this is essentially a workforce planning issue, and we have been talking a lot about inadequate workforce planning in the Department. Dr. Farrell has set out a number of steps that should be taken and I cannot help but ask why this is not being done. Why were those steps not taken years ago? This has been a looming crisis for at least the past ten or 15 years. What engagement has Dr. Farrell's organisation had with the Department and what does it take to move this stuff on? There are ten proposals and those, and other proposals, need to be activated now and operationalised. However, it seems we continue to talk about them. What is happening at departmental level?