Mr. Robert Morton:

People have actually passed the assessment. The Deputy mentioned repeated attempts. This person has attempted the exam on several occasions but has not passed it. There might be an individual story involved in that. The process being described, which we recognise, results in either a pass or fail. In other words, it is a cliff-edge approach, which rarely works today. We have already decided to abandon that process and move towards an induction model. There is a reason we have always done it differently for EMTs and continue to do so. There are 3,500 registered EMTs in Ireland but they rarely have any clinical experience. We have traditionally always recruited EMTs and put them through an induction process to make sure they gradually adapt to the work environment, which is obviously very challenging. We have always expected qualified paramedics to be able to hit the ground running, which is why there has been a cliff-edge assessment. People are either good enough or they are not. The reason for this traditionally - and I stress the word "traditionally" - has been that the regulation of paramedics in Ireland is contained within relatively weak legislation. Each paramedic must be individually privileged to practice. This privilege has to be issued individually to each and every paramedic. In our case, it is issued by Professor O'Donnell. Unlike other autonomous practitioners, who stand on their own two feet, we have to assure Professor O'Donnell that every paramedic is competent because he is effectively carrying the can. That is why we have had the competency assessment. We have now decided to abandon that approach and move to an induction process to align with what we are doing with the University of Limerick, UL. All of those individuals will be captured and hoovered up by that approach. We will try to bring in everybody we possibly can. However, it is also important to recognise that paramedic registration is only one aspect of public sector recruitment.