Ms Susan Clyne:

I will take the last one first. We do not have the data in that particular instance about equipment failing or equipment not being available but the HSE should have that. We know that elective or scheduled care is routinely cancelled and that goes back to our favourite subject - the lack of beds in the system. That is where we do have an issue.

Yes, there is a global shortage of doctors. We do not have data on the output from every country. Regarding the number of doctors we train here, we do not have a coherent workforce plan, which is something else we have been calling for, so we can have the number of graduates, taking into account some manoeuvre and resilience. Not everybody will go on to finish it or go on to want to practice medicine in the long run. We need to increase our graduates, we definitely need to increase our approved training posts and we need to be able to match the demographics of the consultants and specialists we will need in the future. We know a significant number of consultants are due to retire over the next number of years, so obviously we will have to match that.

Regarding the doctors internationally who come to practice in Ireland and how appreciative we are of them, Pakistan and Sudan are the top two, then it is a variety of other countries underneath that. Those are the critical places where the visa issues are taking place.

I will let my colleagues, namely, Professor Sadlier, Dr. McNamara and Dr. Gilligan, address some of the Senator’s other questions.