Professor Orla Sheils:

One of the biggest issues with regard to recruiting the numbers we need in a sustainable way is the fact we rely on funding from different Departments. The Higher Education Authority, HEA, or the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, DFHERIS, can fund academic spaces in institutions, but we are dependent on the HSE to fund clinical tutors. The pressures on it may mean it is not going to do that, which limits the number of students we can process, because they have to be in a safe clinical environment. There is not that joined-up thinking whereby to resource the provision of healthcare practitioners, we need both the right hand and the left hand to work together.