Ms Marie O'Shea:

I think it is. The lead-in time to the appointment of a consultant is one year. That in itself is a delaying factor. A person may take up a post but there could be a further delay if he or she has a contractual obligation somewhere else. The bigger, more technical hospitals attract more attention than the smaller ones. It could be the case that further incentives to try to attract willing providers to certain hospitals need to be included, such as protected time.

It was notable to me that at the time of doing this review, eight hospitals did not provide services. I asked the HSE what the status of recruitment was. It indicated that an additional four hospitals would provide services this year but the recruitment process had not actually started until last year. If you infer from the fact that the HSE was interviewing in January, it means it must not have started the process until 2022. What has been happening in the interim period is another question. If there is management in certain hospitals, and that would seem to be so from the research Dr. Duffy did, who are quite apathetic towards service provision, that needs to be teased out. Where service arrangements are in place that allow the HSE in section 37 hospitals to come in and almost take over the board if it exceeds its expenditure, why cannot the HSE come in to these hospitals and take over the recruitment process?