Professor Eilis McGovern:

I will answer Senator Burke's three questions that pertained to training. He asked about the duration of training programmes for the 80% of doctors who are in structured training. Interns get a one-year contract. Basic specialty training is either two or three years, depending on the specialty. Higher specialist training is between four and six years depending on the specialty. Other than those posts, the other 20% of posts that are not in training - around 1,000 - are non-training by definition or are sometimes referred to as service-grade posts. Those are invariably one-year contracts, often renewed.