Mr. Liam Woods:

Some observations have been made about group-level recruitment. This is probably relevant to the point made by Deputy Brassil about the assignment of individuals across locations within a group to provide care on multiple sites during the training phase or in permanent employment. The groups are focused on the latter aspect of this issue. I will come to the actual recruitment mechanisms in a moment. Joint appointment across sites is happening and we will see more of that. I think we will be increasingly dependent on rotation from larger to smaller sites to maintain appropriate staff levels and the right kind of clinical input, which is a point that has been mentioned. This is part of group planning. We can give the committee documentation on the recruitment process itself. Voluntary hospitals tend to recruit for themselves. Approximately half of the total acute service resource is in voluntary hospitals. The statutory hospitals recruit through the national recruitment service. Truly national campaigns are sometimes run. A recent campaign to recruit emergency department nurses asked for applications to all points. The recruitment service will support somewhere like Limerick in running its own competitions locally. It does the same in Galway. Local units are supported in running competitions. There can be back-end administration around Garda clearance and contracting that does not necessarily exist on every site. The interviewing and the creation of competitions is done locally.