Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his detailed response. I have one final question. Over the Easter recess, much of the public discourse was dominated by nurses and teachers saying they cannot live in Ireland’s largest cities. They graduate and cannot afford to live there. Will the Minister give serious consideration to having some financial support provided to graduate nurses to remain close to the hospital environment and perhaps to live, like they did until the 1980s, in the nurses' home, which was co-located with the hospital? Is the Minister, in the first instance, looking at anything like that?

The other issue is the brain drain, because any person who has been in any of our acute hospital systems lately will notice that while it is very obvious the staff are very welcome and valued, many of the staff a person will encounter are from Asian and African countries providing fabulous, fantastic healthcare. It is very striking then to see our nurses and our doctors graduate through the Irish system, and weeks after having graduated, they are boarding a plane and heading to Australia. This is a revolving door, and while the level of investment the Minister and his Department are committing is very admirable and significant and is making impacts, that does not matter unless all of these people can be recruited within the acute system. Will the Minister consider supports at any point to keep these medical personnel here or, indeed, some carrot-and-stick mechanism, with more carrot than stick, to ensure these people remain in the country after graduating? This might perhaps be, in particular, by supporting them through their final year with some of the costs associated with training. The brain drain, certainly, is a major factor.