Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is what I am saying. The issue is how we expand community care so that it is not just available five days a week, because that way one still needs to have the numbers in the hospitals. On the numbers in hospitals, one of the things that has to change is in regard to the number of doctors and nurses, which has grown over the past six years. In 2014, 103,000 people were working in the HSE. Now the figure is around 135,000, which is an increase of more than 30,000. The problem is that we have also had an increase in population.

What is Dr. Burke's view on looking at the role of people working in hospitals. Many junior doctors are doing work that nurses are more than qualified to do. Nurses are doing a lot of work that care assistants could do. Many private hospitals are going towards theatre assistants. They still have theatre nurses but they are also training theatre assistants. Do we need to look at that whole system both on a community level, in the sense of having a lot more nurses working with GPs and making sure we provide the funding for that, but also making sure we get the message out that nurses are more than qualified to provide a lot of the care that GPs are currently required to provide?