Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I mentioned this earlier. There are a couple of parts to it. First, the HSE is not a skilled developer and I dare say would not make a very good landlord. I urge caution around that. My focus regarding the available capital budget and capital works has to be on building capacity both in the hospitals and in the community healthcare services. Of course, as part of recruitment and retention strategy, we have to look at that. We have an analysis being done at the moment, which I got a draft of yesterday, as to what the possibilities might be. The Minister, the board of the HSE and I are open to that but I urge caution.

Many public servants have this challenge, including gardaí and teachers, but the three groups we need to focus on are: non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, on the move every six months because it is an impossibility for junior doctors to keep finding accommodation; student nurses, particularly coming into their pre-registration year or intern year, as it is often called; and nurses we recruit from abroad, 1,400 expected this year, who for their first 12 to 14 weeks will be particularly challenged. We need to try to help people with that. I said on the public record and suffered a bit for it - it was one of the first times I put the foot in the mouth in the 12 weeks I was here - that the days of the nurses' home are gone. I do not intend revisiting that. I do not think it was a good model. It was of its day. Having a nurses' home with 40 or 50 nurses on campus was in a very different time. I am not sure that accommodation would suit many people. We have tried to convert those buildings for use.

My direction of travel in responding to those three priority groups or accommodation for healthcare staff generally is this. We have a not insignificant amount of land in the ownership of the HSE. The Land Development Agency has, rightly, its sights on some of that. I would like to see the accommodation built in the environments of hospitals and healthcare facilities comprehending some measure of proportionality towards serving the needs of the healthcare workforce in that area. Strategically, I would be pursuing the Land Development Agency. I am not closed to assisting others. If we are to assist those three categories of staff, we would at minimum need the assistance of an approved housing body. We would not do it well ourselves. I do not say that in any disparaging way to my colleagues.