Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

I want to move on to a different issue. The Taoiseach talked about the next Government action plan and we are very much focused on infrastructure. He mentioned the increasing population, and since 2000 the population has increased by 43%, with 1.6 million more people in the country. I know that we have created an extra one million jobs since 2011 but the challenge now is to do with services. Over the past two years, I have been trying to have the number of radiation therapists increased. We had linear radiation therapy scanners lying idle because we did not have enough radiation therapists. In Cork, there is a current shortfall of 12 radiation therapists because they are not physically available. While we are focusing very much on infrastructure, we need now to grow services in many areas by about 40%, the same as the population increase.

I previously raised the issue of dentistry. Do we need to look at an overall view of services, not at delivery but the planning for it, as regards college places in higher education institutions like the Munster Technological University and others? We need to ensure that we are planning for enough people to come through the education system to be able to deliver those services. That is the concern I have. The dental service is really chaotic at the moment. In fairness, we increased the number of GPs in training from 180 in 2024 to 350 this year, so that by 2028, we will have 350 trained GPs graduating. However, we are not doing this in every area. In the Government action plan are we looking at services and forward planning in the education system to make sure we have people trained in those areas?