Mr. Bernard Gloster:

There is an acceptance of integrated planning for the workforce, rather than the standard recruitment activities year on year. At the previous meeting, we discussed future resourcing needs. It involves quite extensive work. Ms Hoey can talk to the detail of it. Quite extensive work has been done by the HSE and the Department, along with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, on projections around many of the different disciplines growing training places, not just in medicine but also nursing, as well as addressing increasing demand for allied health professionals in the three core therapies, namely, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy.

The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science this week discussed at the Cabinet committee on health the approach to building that up incrementally and building on the number of places available over the next couple of years. That will obviously go to the Estimates process this year and so on.

On the HSE operational end of integrated workforce planning, we are trying to look to the future in terms of the number involved and are trying to predict what is required against the available graduate base. We are targeting our efforts against that rather than trying to recruit what we know is not there.