Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

These are all the elements. I am on a committee of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly which is looking at the idea of rural housing. One of the things that started to come up at a recent meeting is that if you are serious about building communities in rural areas, on islands or wherever, you need to have a home for the doctor, the police officer and the teacher, and you need to have all those key elements such as childcare. All of those types of things are needed. That is the way. We are really talking about planning for the future and that needs to be there.

I wish to point out that as a committee we got a number of briefing documents this morning, as has been alluded to by members. There was one in relation to the consultant contract and there are notes around that. We also received a paper on the task force implementation update during this morning's meeting. It came in at 10.30 a.m. and therefore, it was a bit difficult for anyone to try to refer to it. The witness said there was no follow-through on measures. If we had that document, we could have probably highlighted what the Department and the HSE are saying in relation some of the follow-through in this regard.

The witness spoke to the chaotic system we have around doctors not getting paid. For me, as a lay person, but also for the people listening at home, it just seems crazy. Is it a system in which people are not getting paid or might they have moved on? Does the doctor fill in the hours they are there or is it the hospital that does that? What is the system in that regard?