Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was attending a meeting of the committee on European affairs and I was also speaking in the House. I thank all of the witnesses. I have not had a chance to read their presentations but I will do so later. I came to raise a specific issue in order that I could hear the views of the IMO on it. It is in the context of the HSE moratorium on the recruitment of staff, specifically the employment of non-consultant hospital doctors. A number of people in Sligo University Hospital have contacted me to say they have real problems with NCHD numbers, in particular in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine.

It is being said that the impact of that is threefold. First, it is affecting the doctors themselves and their own work-life balance. I refer to the astonishing statistics quoted earlier concerning the number of interns leaving. Second, hospitals should align with the NCHD contract and this does not seem to be happening. Patient safety is at risk of being compromised. The third thing is that if those extra NCHDs were there, then further surgical procedures could take place, so this situation is hampering the output of the surgical consults, etc. Across so many different areas, then, this is a bad decision. One of the things I will check is, at the end of it all, how much money will have been saved by this moratorium in the context of the extra time that staff have had to work to cover. This issue, though, is not for today but for another time when I will, hopefully, be able to get that information. My question concerns the fact that we are told that certain categories are not part of this moratorium and yet greater numbers of NCHDs cannot be got at Sligo hospital or, I presume, at other hospitals. Why is this happening?