Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for those questions. There is quite a good deal to unpack in those questions. The first question the Deputy asked was in respect of the cost of housing, essentially. I believe there is a case to be made and I have discussed this with various hospitals. As the Deputy quite rightly says, it used to be the case that hospitals generally had nursing accommodation. In Galway, for example, it is still there but it has been turned into office blocks. I believe there is a case within individual hospitals and I have spoken to individual hospital managers about it and they are quite interested in it and in buying or retrofitting existing apartments for whomever it might be. It might be visiting or non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, on their rotation, graduate nurses, or international clinicians coming in and providing accommodation for them for the first time. It is something we have to be open to and that would need to be discussed at length with the Department of Public Expenditure National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, which would be concerned with potential knock-on effects into the rest of the workforce. This is something we used to have and need to keep an open mind to.

When it comes to the issue of clinicians leaving the country, the reality is somewhat different from the narrative. The narrative, if we are to believe it, is that there is not a single healthcare graduate in the country who is interested in staying in Ireland. In fact, for the vast majority of nursing graduates, for example, every one of them is offered a job in the HSE and the vast majority of them take those jobs.

A great number of medical students and health and social care professionals, when they graduate, stay in Ireland. There is nothing wrong with any healthcare professional going abroad after college. I went after three years and had a great time. In medicine, to go abroad is seen as an important part of the role. I have no issue with this and I believe it is quite a healthy thing for Irish graduates and healthcare professionals to go abroad to get international experience. The key is that we want them to come back.

We are approaching this in different ways for different groups. The Deputy will be aware we are putting a big focus on NCHDs. The current work-life balance for NCHDs and how they are treated is completely unacceptable and has been unacceptable for a very long time. We have a very important piece of work going on in making things better for them. The Deputy will be aware that in the budget before us today, we have allocated an additional €5.5 million, for example, to student nurses in the increase of supports for them. As I said, the majority of graduates actually do stay here in the HSE.

Similarly, we need to look at the health and social care professionals, who tend to get a lesser share of the voice but are just as important as the nursing, midwifery and medical students. Ultimately, the solution is where the Deputy quite rightly says we have an unusually high level of international healthcare professionals in the country. That is not because our graduates leave but because we do not have enough graduates. One thing I want to see is a doubling of healthcare college places in the country. This is something the Minister, Deputy Harris, and I are engaged in. There was already a big expansion last September and there will be another material expansion this coming September. We will keep going with this. We have approximately 2,000 entry nursing places in the country and I believe we need approximately 4,000. We have now started on the journey of expanding that throughout the country.