David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With regard to the recruitment embargo, I accept that there has been a very healthy net increase in staff over the past three years.

This is a good news story. However, we are moving from a good news story to a different space. This year, there will be a net increase of 2,200 under the national service plan. This may well be higher when the service plan comes out. Who knows? It certainly will not be in the region of 6,000, 7,000 or 8,000 as it was in previous years. This is a difficulty. We visited the Magee campus. Some training courses there are being funded by the Irish Government. These are in community services, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy. We saw the training courses being done. These are being funded by the South. The number of training places are being increased. These are areas where we have a shortfall.

I have spoken to many chief officers in community services about the impact of the recruitment freeze, embargo or whatever we want to call it. I know the Department is precious about what it is. Call it what you want but we are hiring fewer staff this year then we were in the past three years. There was some tightening on recruitment at the end of 2023. This will have an impact on those in training places at present. They are looking at this and wondering why there is a recruitment freeze. They want to work in the public system but many of them will not be able to do so.

From speaking to the head of the HSE, my understanding is that since the recruitment embargo was put in place, some hospitals and healthcare facilities have been recruiting for additional posts. These will now have to be funded as part of the 2,200 posts in the service plan. How long will it take for us to reach the ceiling? When we do so, will it be a case that we will not be able to recruit any more staff and it will not matter who comes out of training colleges or who wants to come and work in the public system because the opportunity will not be there. It is important for this to be clarified. What is the current position? Is there still a recruitment freeze in place? How will it shift and change when the service plan is published?

Does the Minister accept that from an optics point of view it does not look good that we cannot recruit the levels of staff we possibly could into the public system? Someone very close to me who is a nurse wanted to work additional hours. The person works one day a week and wanted to work a number of days a week. This nurse is not in a position to do so because of this. The hospital management has said it is not possible. There are a number of examples of it. I hear many personal examples of people who want to work in the public system or do more hours but cannot do so. This is not a good place for us to be in.