Mr. Tony Canavan:

If it is okay, I will provide some real-life examples of that in action. To take Galway as an example, there are 283 consultants currently employed in University Hospital Galway, 166 of whom now hold the new 2023 public-only contract. We have been looking very closely at how that is benefiting our patients.

We are starting to see early signs of that, with quite a bit more work to do. An example of the early signs we are seeing is our emergency department. We currently have 5.5 whole-time equivalent consultants working in the emergency department in Galway, and three of those five are on the new contract. They are providing care outside of the Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. standard working week in order to help with patient flow and we are starting to see some inroads there.

We can look across the range of medical disciplines. In medicine, 52 consultants are now on the new contract. Of those, 37 are providing care on Saturdays and all 52 are providing care outside of the normal Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. working week. That is important because when we see patients awaiting admission on trolleys in emergency departments, as we do today, they are awaiting beds that can only be made available to them once a clinician, usually a physician, has made a decision to discharge a patient from the hospital. Having those physicians available over the course of the week and outside the normal Monday to Friday working hours is important. That has contributed to some of the improvements we have seen in the discharge rates at Galway University Hospital.