Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Staffing is pressured but recruitment is well ahead of target across all the grades we have at present. We are some 20,000 whole-time equivalents different from the pre-pandemic 2019 phase. Recruitment targets for this year are well ahead and attrition is not expected to be as high this year as it was last year. All of that will help.

On the medical assessment units, MAUs, specific to the mid west, just before the Deputy came in, in answer to another question, I referenced a trial run that was done for two or three weeks after the Christmas period, which Mr. McCallion approved, to operate the units at St. John's and Nenagh on the same basis as Ennis over a seven-day period. That appeared to indicate a level of success. The CEO of UL Hospitals Group, Ms. Colette Cowan, was very clear with me that it would make a substantial difference to several thousand patients. Very shortly after taking up my post, I approved 54 permanent additional posts and a budget of approximately €5.5 million to extend the MAUs in the mid west to a full seven-day scale over a 12-hour day. The indications are not yet there as to whether MAUs going to a 24-hour basis in a model 2 hospital would make a substantial difference, but it is something we are not closed to. We are trying to target the effort where we can.

It is the same for the local injury units, LIUs. It is about wherever we can scale the capacity. I gave approval yesterday evening, coming into the June bank holiday weekend, as a trial, and the August bank holiday weekend, for hospital CEOs to secure extra capacity in both LIUs and MAUs wherever they can. They have the freedom to do that to manage the capacity as best they can. If they are able to scale the LIUs and secure staff, be it through overtime, agency or recruitment, they can do that. That is where our focus will be.