Dr. Ciaran Browne:

Senator Burke raised the issue of doctors from India and Pakistan staying on. Initially we recruited 220 doctors from those countries and they were placed on the supervised division within the Medical Council. The individual registration of a doctor is between the doctor and the Medical Council, while the HSE is interested in facilitating the transfer of many of those doctors from the supervised division to the general division.

Last year we began a process with the Medical Council to specifically create additional capacity to facilitate the transfer of those doctors from India and Pakistan to the general division. We have supported the Medical Council with additional administrative support so the documentation and all the administrative processes associated with registration could be fast-tracked through the system. The HSE has been working with the Medical Council to ensure the opportunity for those doctors to take up registration is in place and we have worked with each of the individual doctors to see how we could assist them in the transfer.

Of the cohort of 220 doctors, we would not expect all 100% of them to stay on, they make individual choices based on career or family considerations, but we have worked to create the capacity within the Medical Council to facilitate that registration process.