Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for the opportunity. It is a very welcome time to bring her up to date on this issue. If I work backward, even from the Christmas period, the HSE ran a very active campaign, and when I say active, I mean that from the end of December to the middle of January it ran a very open campaign that was all about recruitment for disability services. A total of 425 open applications were made to it, 255 of which were completely outside of any section 38 or 39 organisations or the HSE and 146 of which were new people who were not from anything within health at this time. At the moment, the HSE is going through that and interviews will have started by the beginning of March. That is really welcome.

Working back again, while the embargo hit one side of the HSE, it did not hit our side. It was very much welcomed by the CEO of the HSE, Mr. Bernard Gloster, and that was working in consultation with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and Department officials to ensure disability could continue to recruit and that we could meet our base levels of proper clinical governance and cover. To be fair to the CEO and the board of the HSE, they have worked with us on that. Sometimes there is a bit of confusion on that and it is important to stay at it. It is all to do about primary number notifications. Back in 2016, when a reconfiguration was taking place, some of the staff might not have had a primary number and they are working through that. To be fair to Mr Bernard O'Regan, seemingly, he signed off on 130 of last Thursday's primary numbers so that they can continue to recruit. That is the only piece on it.

There is much work going on as well at a local level with bespoke arrangements in the likes of County Donegal. They ran another Home for Christmas campaign, but they are also running bursaries and they are working with Coventry University. We are also working on recruitment from abroad. There is, therefore, a lot going on within disability services to bring up the base level. Of the 800 posts that would have been funded since 2020, 359 have been filled, and it is hoped, from what has been established with the 425 applications, we will see more coming on board.

The last piece would be where the panel system would have proved problematic in that past. The Chair will have heard, as all of us have, about the panel. For counties Donegal, Galway and Waterford, to all intents and purposes, if a person is on the panel, regardless of whether he or she is No. 1 or 99, that person can apply and will have an opportunity for that interview. We will fill from the panel of anybody who wishes to go to those three locations. Between those two models I talked about, that is, the Home for Christmas campaign and the panel system, we are hoping to have a very big uplift in those three counties. At the same time, however, it is hoped Mr. Gloster, along with the Minister, me and Department officials, will have the staff census. There is an embargo there at the moment on getting data from the administration within the HSE, which is really stifling us getting right down into the nuts and bolts of it. There is a Fórsa work-to-rule action on providing data to the CEO of the HSE. If we had more current data, I could tell the Cathaoirleach the next county on which I need to go to work with the HSE and Minister. Overall, however, there have been positive changes in the past six months on recruitment in disability.