Professor Eilis McGovern:

Currently, the structure of training is pyramidal and, therefore, we have enough training places for every graduate to get onto a basic specialty training programme but the step from basic to higher specialist is numerically a big challenge. However, to cope with the Fottrell report numbers and to give graduates certainty, we will work hard to convert non-training posts back to training posts. It will not be vertical but allowing for the normal attrition that happens at different stages going through a training process, the goal will be that every graduate has access to a training programme, which will, ultimately, result in a certificate of specialist training.