Professor Eilis McGovern:

I take everything Deputy Mitchell O'Connor has said on board. Some things have changed. In the past, the training bodies and the HSE were quite separate. Since taking up my new role last year, I am a member of the Forum of Irish Medical Postgraduate Training Bodies and I sit on the executive committee of that forum. The MET, medical education and training, unit of the HSE is working closely with the forum to try to address all of the issues that Deputy Mitchell O'Connor has just described. Something which underpins all of that is the Fottrell report, which made a recommendation of employing 725 doctors per year, based on the calculation that this is what is required for a modern health service. The Fottrell report recommends that we educate and graduate 700 doctors per annum and that we then create the capacity in the hospital system and in general practice to allow them to become specialists. The third step is that the system creates the permanent posts to take those people into the health service in Ireland. That is the principle on which both the MET unit and the Forum of Irish Medical Postgraduate Training Bodies are working.

In terms of clarity about the training journey, that is something that the trainees constantly raise and it is a very reasonable expectation. In that context, we are trying to incorporate as many posts into training rotations as possible and to have certainty about the duration of the training rotations. It is important to note that employment contracts are for six months or one year but training agreements, when a doctor is successful in getting onto a training programme, range from two to six years, depending on the specific programme. The training body is not in a position to give a contract of employment -----