Ms Ginny Hanrahan:

A new working group has just been put in place in the past few months, which includes representatives from the Departments of Health and Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, CORU and other regulators. It is looking at what we can do to improve things like placement provision. The number of students attending courses must be guided by the number of placements that can be provided. Some colleges have run into problems whereby they have taken on far too many students and do not have enough placements for them. Bodies like Tusla often work very hard to try to provide those placements. The national health and social care professionals office in the HSE is very actively involved in trying to provide placements. We must acknowledge the issues in this regard. Professor Sheils outlined really well that when people are being trained to go into health and social care, whether that is medicine, occupational therapy or whatever, there must be placements to ensure they have the right training when they come out. That is very challenging, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid period, when all front-line staff are under great pressure. There is some work going on to improve access to placements.