Mr. Robert Watt:

We have a team of people in the Department focused on this. They work with our colleagues in the HSE and are backed by people from the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, some of whom are from the CSO. There is now a very strong data-driven approach and a significant piece of consultancy work is being undertaken to look at this.

Over recent years, we have had the largest net increase in the number of people recruited in the health system. We are also focusing on training. We have increased the number of medical and nursing places. We are now looking at accelerating the expansion of undergraduate training opportunities across all of the different disciplines, including pharmacy, dentistry, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, medicine, nursing and so on. The Minister, Deputy Harris, will, it is hoped, make an announcement in respect of that. There is significant change in planning. There is expansion but also improvement as well as looking to the future. As we know, there are significant challenges.