Mr. Robert Morton:

The obvious response is that we would not accept it. Our experience of qualified recruitment has been mixed and disappointing. Generally, we get about 40 applicants a year. Those applicants are often repeat applicants, so when one looks at the cumulative numbers, they look much bigger than they actually are, but when one actually counts the heads, the number is low. This year, we have made ten offers to qualified paramedics. Only six have accepted the offers. We have found that even since 2014, we have had a number of clinical incidents. We had a mixed experience of people who joined the National Ambulance Service with qualifications obtained outside the State because to be a registered paramedic, one has to be accepted by the competent authority in Ireland, which is the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council, but one's qualifications and experience can be very varied depending on the jurisdiction one comes from, whether EU or non-EU. We have had a mixed experience so we have decided to abandon the idea of qualified recruitment. Frankly, it has not worked for us.

We have been working with one of our educational partners, the University of Limerick, UL, to look at a completely different model, which we will introduce this year. We hope to see a different approach whereby we will recruit postgraduate interns and take people in as interns whether they are qualified or not. We will put them through an internship ourselves.